Badass, In General

A fictitious blog for CIS 70 Santa Monica College:  Glen Chung, student

[badassingen]

What is a Tweetup?

A tweetup is a physical meeting of a group of inter-following Twitter users, hosted by one or more users within that networked inter-following group.  It is likely, but not necessary, that the host would be some figure central to the interest of this Twitter group.  

For example, if many science teachers were to follow @badassingen, then Badassingen may have some incentive to organize a Tweetup.  Such a meeting would foster the exchange of ideas on topics common to the group (science education, in this case), and would also increase brand recognition and loyalty for the host.

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#scienceteachers Tweetup!

(fictitious) Science teachers who follow @badassingen, let’s have a Tweetup!  Bring your telescope if you can, and let’s meet at BadassK-12 headquarters in south L.A.  We’ll roll out our deep space telescope and point it at the Andromeda galaxy M31.  How about that?  T-day weekend Sunday night, 7:30p to 10:30p, just come and go anytime in between.  Cocoa and light snacks are served to get the sharing of ideas flowing.  Assume cancellation if it rains.  If cloudy, we’ll pull out the inflatable planetarium (which you can borrow from us for your class, by the way).  Bring your student work or whatever to show off, you can pin stuff up on our homasote board for the night!

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The data from the upgraded magnetometer array sites that we visited has already begun to stream online.  I expected the plots to look much the same right now, as solar activity has been low; not sure what’s up with the Kaktovik and Toolik Lake plots.  Checking my lab notebook, there weren’t any weird occurrences or irregularities that I noticed at those two sites.  I’ll ask the others in the group, at the next group meeting.

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The University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Beech Baron G58, which I liked so much that I adopted as my avatar.  It’s an older model, but it has a soundproof cabin, Garmin GTN750 avionics, and you can see the ground imaging camera mounted underneath; it’s all very posh indeed, and with the cold-weather mods, this thing is well over a million bucks.  I think the original plane was decommissioned and donated by the Navy, or something like that.

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Finally caught aurora borealis

First time seeing it.  Better than expected.  Total must-see.

The shack is where we stayed, the closest building to the array site just outside Barrows. Probably I will need to visit Alaska again in the future, just for sights like this. I should stay in magnetospheric research in order to generate excuses to come here, right?

But I wouldn't live here. There's too much risk of icy roads, and old Ouroboros would only get to roll a few times a year. Can't have that, right?

[badassingen]

Magnetometer array hardware installation trip, with UAF team

Just back from University of Alaska Fairbanks.  Working with the magnetospheric research team there was a hoot.  They let me pilot their Hawker Beech Baron G58 research aircraft after I showed them my log book, and we hopped to all of the Geophysical Institute magnetometer array sites in Alaska and western Canada.  The team involved me in some hardware upgrades and installations at each site.

My own data collection module formed a small part of the hardware upgrades, and I learned how to bulwark my circuit board box against the harsh weather conditions of the northern latitudes.  Actually, I had to remove my own enclosure completely, as it would have been prone to collecting frost inside the box, how about that.  Here was my el-cheapo enclosure, which would have been fine in California; I have circled in yellow my wire access points:

And here's the enclosure they had me use. Next time I'll get my own, from Adafruit.com :

I had to use banana plugs instead of running wires directly in and out of the box, in order to seal the box completely. Also tossed in some silica gel packets. After the modifications, you could unplug my module from the main array in seconds, and then you could even play football with it without risking damage.

Of course, the tedious part of this work was retro-fitting all of the copies of my module with the new case, for each of the magnetometer array stations. Really missed the undergrad volunteers at that point!