Nick Brook

Trip to Lyon & walk in the sun

So as I said last week, I made a trip to Lyon to a meeting hosted by IN2P3 (the French computing centre for nuclear & particle physics.) It meant an early start. I left the car at CERN and caught a bus from Meyrin for a 6:00am train. The meeting on Tuesday was a discussion of the ongoing LCG service challenges, basically the developmenty of the infrastructure to allow the data volumes to be transferred from computing to computing centre once the LHC starts, and the plans for the future and the experiments' involvement in the future. The following day there was a meeting of the Grid deployment board; this was dominated by the presentation from the US on how are things are organised and progressing there. This is of cursory interest to LHCb as we have no US collaborators. Inaddition there was detailed presentation activities at IN2P3 itself.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. Most ot the week the temperature is been in the 20's (Celsius that is). The snow was fast disappearing from the Jura. So off I set for a walk into the hills, not too high though to avoid the snow that was stilll there. It was good to get a bit of exercise. It was the first time I got off for a walk since the autumn. I certainly felt the exertion this morning.

Well next week is Easter and I'm off home to see the family. But first, Thursday we have to interview 15 people for a number posts that are coming up at Bristol. Sounds a hectic schedule.

LHCb week comes & goes

Last week was the one of the quarterly meetings of the whole of the LHCb collaboration - 3 are held at CERN and once a year it is hosted by an external institute. As a grad student and young postdoc collab week I really looked forward to. Get to meet people you hadn't seen for 2 or 3 months over a meal or a beer or two. Nowadays things seem more frantic. It is either I've got more responsbility or I'm less well-organised. I liked to think that it is the former but then again ....

The problem with collaboration meeting is I seem to have to attend many a meeting scheduled in the evening. Tuesday it was the National Computing Board where issues affecting computing external to CERN are dsicussed. This week that involved a look at the computing resources being promised for 2008 when LHC start taking data and the provision of manpower to provide the core services software. Wednesday was the technical board (oversees all aspects of detector design, time schedules, construction, cost, installation and computing matters) where there was a discussion of milestones for the computing and how the sub-detectors software is provided. Confused? The computing project provides the general framework for the computing but the sub-detectors provide the software that takes their electronic signals and turns them into a physics "object". Of course the left arm should know what the right arm is doing and vice-versa, hence the discussion. Thursday is the collaboration board meeting (the forum for decision and policy-making and represents the ultimate authority in the LHCb organisation - it has one member per institute.) Here discussion was about the addenda to the memoranda of understanding to include the core computing. This document will be presented to the April Resource Review Board, RRB. The RRB is a the body at CERN which monitors & review the use of the resources (read money) in the LHC experiments and consists of funding agency representatives.

I have only been back at CERN for just over a week but it already seems like an internity.

Next week a trip to Lyon looms for a couple of days. There is a meeting of the LHC computing Grid (LCG) deployment board (as well as a service challenge meeting of the LCG.) Lyon is where the French national computing centre is for Particle Physics, hence the venue.

PS Although the Huddersfield Giants were thrashed last weekend they registered their 2nd win of the season last night. Hopefully the winning ways will continue for the two game I'm planning to take in over Easter.

I'm not vey good at this!

So last time it was a week and a bit between entries. This time over 2 weeks.

So I've been back in the UK and the family have been overdosed on my presence (and probably glad to see the back of me)

Got back to the Bristol on the 18th and immediately drove 250 miles North to my mothers to pick up the kids. The compensation being that I get to go and watch the Huddersfield Giants for their first home game of the season. Hopes were high having a good performance in the opening away game of the season. Jack was all fired up because he had met the squad and got their autographs, spent an afternoon playing rugby. The opening 50 minutes of the game they were atrocious but at least for the final 1/2 hour they started to play a bit of rugby and the final score wasn't too embarassing (28-36)

Drive back south afther game on Sunday and into work on the Monday. A series a phone conferences to CERN took most ot the day, along with a meeting with the Dean of Science. Where do the hours go! Estate and builiding have the lab dark now thanks to their paints can & sealant - but the blind is still kaput.Tuesday wasn't much different though I get to phone DESY and spend time discussing the final stages of a thesis with my student on the ZEUS experiment.

Wednesday is one of the official reasons I'm back in the UK. I am chair of the Oversight committee that oversees the deliverables & financial planning of the UK part of the ALICE experiment (heavy ion experiment at the LHC) on behalf of the UK funding agency. These meeting occurs twice a year and usually entails a trip to Swindon to admire its architectural delights. My other committee memebers are a Nuclear Physicist from Sussex & a Lattice guage theorist from Swansea.

Thursday is an early morning flight from Bristol up to Edinburgh to be an external examiner for a PhD viva. I always enjoy being an examiner as I got to probe deeply into someone else's analysis and/or thoughts. It can be quite enlightening. The flight up is delayed and I am in a rush to get to the department. Thhe UK system is that the viva is open to alumuni of the university and their are 2 examiners: one external & one internal. The viva started at 10 o'clock and ended going on towards 14:00. I needed leave the university at 14:30 in order to catch my flight bac down to Bristol. There was a long deliberation afterwards and in the end it was a bit of a rush to leave for 14:30. It's at this stage I realise my wallet has gone - dropped, stolen, ...? I last had it to pay for the taxi from the airport. Of course it contains all my credit cards, banker cards etc - big disaster!

Friday was a less hectic day back in the department. The Queen was visitng the university, in fact across the road from the physics department. Motrocyclists & police everywhere. One of the nice features of being back in Bristol on Friday is popping for a quick pint (or two!) after work before catching the bus home.

Weekend: we have a leak coming through the ceiling from upstairs. Marvelous! Nothing too flood worthy but still a leak. The usual rigmarole of sport on the Saturday. A visit to Kewstoke for Jack's football (3-0 win). And on Sunday a trip to Winscombe for Jack's rugby - two in fact as he left his mouthguard on the stairs! And then in the afternoon a trip to the depths of Somerset, a place called Pawlett, to watch Ryan play football for Churchill. Boy is the place exposed - a lovely sunny day but the wind is howling and is bitterly cold. The result is a 2-1 win - for those of you that are bored you can follow the league positions on
http://full-time.thefa.com/gen/Index.do?league=2097415 & select Under 15 - Division 2

Monday was a day when I was going to finish of some paperwork for a PPARC meeting on Tuesday & Wednesday. But some unknow reason I don't get chance to look at it during the day as things crop up so that means working at home in the evening. Oh by the way the leak was a radiator pipe joint loose - thanks to Jude.

Tuesday is an early start - up to Oxford for this PPARC meeting. This is a two-day meeting of the Project Peer Review panel that assesses all Particle Physics and Astronomy projects within the UK before PPARC signs up for them. It can also award seedcorn money to kick start projects or to allow UK institutes to undertake R&D that could lead to future leadership roles in future large scale projects. This meeting was looking at reviewing proposal for Innovative Technology scheme as well as as looking at larger UK particle phjysics projects such as CALICE (calorimeter for future linear collider activities) SuperNEMO ( a project looking into neutrino masses) and FP420 (looking at diffractive physics at the LHC.) I'm out of email contact for two-days - will I survive the Cold Turkey.

It's Thursday and it's back to CERN. A slight delay in the flight from Bristol but back in good time for my meeting in the afternoon. In fact I should now be writing a talk rather than this blog for a presnetation tomorrow!