Am I back? We'll see!

Over the past several months, I have avoided blogging.  There are a few reasons for this, but one of the biggest was that I really didn't feel like I had that much to share.  I really wanted to my blog to be about some of my adventures and/or science that I was taking part in, but I haven't actually been doing either of those things.  Most of my time was spent searching for a job and waiting to hear back about job applications... There isn't very much to say about that, but now that I have picked up a position, I am hoping to be able to get back into posting on here. That being said, there may be a shift away from "science" more toward "technology", but I don't plan on completely avoiding or abandoning science any time soon.  And in all honesty, some of the technology I hope to explore has connection to science as well.  It can be hard to separate science and technology so we'll see how that goes.  In the mean time,  I have a ton of cleaning on on my social media accounts to get them up-to-date so that they don't still all say that I am down at the bottom of the world!  But after I get things cleaned up, hopefully, I can get a few interesting posts up.  Soon, I also hope to have some interesting flying posts, so there will be more adventures ahead, but I have a few things to take care of before then, so we'll see how that goes.

Six Months at the South Pole!

Today is a very exciting day for me! It marks six months at the South Pole.  I arrived here on November 2, 2016, a few days before my last birthday, and I have been here six months as of today. It has been a wonderful adventure so far and I am looking forward to the next six months, especially now that the sun has set, and we are having some amazing views of the night sky with the stars, milky way, and especially the auroras!

Over the past few weeks, life on station has been fairly routine. The temperatures went up a bit for a while, but are now holding around -90F with a wind chill of around -130F. I generally get up every day and the first thing I do is check email and check on the experiment I am working on, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. I then try to move on to personal projects, assuming everything is running well and no one from the IceCube group up North has any requests.  Thankfully, the detector has been running very smooth lately, and with the exception of a few small problems and some calibration work, there hasn't been much that we've had to do.  As it turns out, however,  the one "big" problem we had to deal with lately was a failed power supply a few days ago.  For some reason since winter started, I have moved more to a night schedule. Really, this doesn't make much sense, as it is always dark here since the sunset, but somehow, even without any real sense of day or night, I still moved to a night schedule.  That being said, a few days ago, I had just fallen asleep when I got a call from Martin about the power supply which failed a little after breakfast.  Thankfully, Martin was on call and it was his turn to go out and replace the power supply.  Unfortunately, when he got out there, it looked the like the problem was bigger than expected and I ended up having to go out and help. Generally, it isn't that big a deal, but now that it is has gotten colder, and since our lab is about 3/4 of a mile away from the main station, by the time I walk out there my balaclava (face mask) has frozen over making it fairly difficult to breath...  not to mention we are still at roughly 10,000 ft altitude.  Suffice it to say, that walking out to the ICL and back can wear you out! At any rate, after I got out there, Martin and I did our work which ended up taking a few hours, and then I headed back to station for lunch and to get some sleep.  Martin, however, stayed out to get some more amazing pictures.  Overall it turned out to be a pretty long day, but it was still a good day, all things considered.

For the most part, winter has been an amazing time. The last power supply failure we had before this week was a couple months ago, and beyond that, our work has mostly been the occasional calibration run. I have been thinking back some over the past few months, and I remember when I first arrived, and we spent the summer working and preparing for winter. Even then I enjoyed my time here, but since the winter season officially started mid-February with all of the summer people leaving, the station has taken on a much different atmosphere. It almost feels like a totally different place. I had heard from some of the previous winterovers how much better it is in winter, and looking back now, I definitely have to agree.  Life is much more laid back now, and our interactions are so much more personal now that we only have 46 people on station. There have obviously been a few small conflicts here and there, but in general, everyone seems to be getting along very well. The people here on station come from all walks of life and political and philosophical backgrounds, but we respect each other and have learned to live together peaceably.

As for my personal projects, I am making progress, more some days than others.  I have been practicing the violin regularly, and there are times I really enjoy it.  Other times, it takes a little motivation to get myself to practice, but in the end it seems to be worth it as I feel that I have at least improved some over the past couple months.  I have been reading a ton, mostly science papers, and I have also been working on some computer projects. I have been playing around with and reviewing some network security ideas and practices, but I have also spent some time playing around with statistics and some programming languages.  In particular, I have been trying to spend some time learning ROOT and Octave, as they have some very powerful tools for statistical analysis. There have also been a few other little computer projects here and there. I am behind on my language studies, but not irreparably so.  I haven't spent much time on Duolingo over the past week and half, but I am hoping to jump back into it in the next day or two. I have also been thinking about a few other small projects that I had planned for the winter.  I'd like to spend some time studying for my instrument rating, and I would like to spend some time really learning Morse code. As of right now, these are not high priority, but maybe I'll start working on them soon.

Overall, things are going well.  I am still very happy to be here. The past couple of weeks, I have gone outside regularly to watch the auroras and see the stars. It is kind of a surreal experience. I have never lived in a place where you could step out at any time of day and there is a chance you'll see auroras.  On that note, my friend and colleague Martin has take some amazing aurora pictures.  I am posting some of them below, particularly for those of you who have not seen them already on facebook, but please check out his flickr account (https://www.flickr.com/photos/135762220@N06) for even more!

The moon and stars from the South Pole! - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Auroras over the dark sector - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Martin in front of the station with an aurora in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

The IceCube Lab with auroras in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Aurora and the moon from the station observation deck - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

The station with an aurora in the background - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

More auroras - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Another Shot of the station with auroras - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

A coronal aurora from the South Pole! - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

One last shot of the station with auroras - Martin Wolf IceCube/NSF

Breaking IceCube and Fixing ARA!

The past couple of weeks have been far busier than expected.  We had a new group of IceCube and ARA people come in to do work on the detector, and it turns out there was a ton to get done.  I recently started working on a more science post about IceCube and ARA, but I haven't had the time to get it cleaned up.  I hope I can get it posted in the next few days so that people have a better idea of the work and science being done down here.  Until then, I will try my best to explain some of what we were working on.

ARA is another neutrino detector that is in the process of being constructed down here.  It has many connections with IceCube, which means that it is also an experiment that I am also responsible for.  The big difference is that it looks for much higher energy particles than IceCube, so it is much more spread out.  One of the things I did last week was to pull around 3-5km of fiber optical cable from a couple of the existing ARA stations to the new station sites to be built next season.  At first, it was kind of fun getting out and working.   The weather was reasonably nice and warm, around -15F to -20F.  The sun was shining, and it was an opportunity to hang out with some fun and interesting people.  I will admit, though, by the time we were done, I was worn out!  We had to unroll this huge cable of wire as it is being pulled behind a forklift.  It doesn't sound quite so bad, but the spool was heavy and we had to spin out so the fiber didn't get damaged.  The other big problem is that we are at an altitude of almost 10,000ft walking through snow.  Thankfully, the snow wasn't too loose and was a least a little packed down.  But lets be honest, no matter how used to the cold I seem to have gotten over the past few months here, after spending a few hours at -20F.... I was feeling cold!  Actually, it was only my fingers, toes, and face.  That being said, I did get an epic ice beard going.  That might have made it all worth it!

In addition to that, we actually got a request to BREAK the IceCube detector!?!  Well, not really.  In reality we performed a stress test of the new software that was recently installed on site.  And how did we do this fun little experiment?  Back when the detector was being constructed, several of the sensors were built with LEDs, called flashers, that we use for calibration work.  Normally, we can turn on these flashers and use them to get a better idea of how the detector is functioning or even changing over time.  In fact we performed over 28 hours of flasher work this season to be used for calibration.  This time, however, we used them to crash everything!  We started by turning on one set of flashers at a time.  After a minute or so, another set of flashers was turned on... then another... and another.  Until finally, there were so many flashers running that the detector couldn't keep up with all the data and everything stopped working!  The sensors in our detector are so sensitive to light, that just flashing a few hundred LEDs can cause the system to crash.  Thankfully, this doesn't do permanent damage to the detector.  In fact, the entire plan was to get so many flashers running that the detector was forced to crash to get a better idea of the performance of the detector under some extreme conditions.  Overall, it actually turned out to be a bit of fun.  Many IceCubers up north got onto the chat and monitoring systems to watch how everything went down.  We had a small group in the lab here at the pole, and the only thing missing was the popcorn!

Overall, things are going well here.  Obviously, I am a little behind on posts.  I have a few nice blog posts planned for the near future, if I can ever get them all typed up.   I am going to give some background on the science here, and I even want to talk about some of the "difficulties" of living at the South Pole.  On a little bit of a side note, I have also been playing on the ham radio down here.   I am going try to get some information about that in a post here soon as well.  It is really fun being able to communicate to the North using nothing be radio waves from the South Pole all way up to the United States!  If there is anything else that people are interested in, I am hoping I can try to cover it soon.  After the station closes in a few weeks,  things should actually really finally slow down here!

 At some point over the past couple of weeks, I actually made it out to another experiment, the South Pole Telescope, for a tour.

We took turns unrolling the fiber as we walked a few km behind a forklift.  It was actually way more work than it looks!

In the process of pulling cable, I actually developed this epic ice beard!  Yay science!

IceCube Winterover Training

I have been in Madison, WI for training for almost three weeks.  I am training to be what we call a Winterover.  This name comes from the fact that I will be spending a full year at the South Pole.  Specifically, I will be spending the winter there.  During the Antarctic summer, planes go in and out of the South Pole regularly, and by regularly, I mean at least once a week or more.  During the Antarctic winter, however, planes rarely if every fly to the South Pole.  As I understand it, they have actually only ever flown in three times during the winter, and that was for big emergency situations.  In general, once the last plane leaves for the season, you are stuck there for 6 months with almost no hope of getting out!  For that reason, you have to go through all the medical and psychological evaluations that I talked about in a previous post.

All that being said, my training now, is mostly on the technical side.  Many people think of this as a scientific position, and to some degree it is.  But the work I am going to be doing at the pole is mostly network and system administration.  The IceCube Neutrino observatory is a large experiment that collects a great deal of data.  There is so much data that we can't even get it all to the North through our satellite connections.  Instead, we have a small cluster of servers located at the South Pole that collects and processes the data to select out only the most interesting parts.  All of the data are saved and eventually shipped to the North on an airplane, but the most interesting data are sent through a satellite connection.  While I am down there, I will be working to fix any problems that arise in the computers or network that collects the data and does the processing.

For the first couple of weeks, my training was largely software based.  There are many different custom applications that process the data collected by the detector.   Even the hardware that collects the data has to be watched and occasionally fixed or upgraded.  There is software that converts all the data collected to useful information, software that filters out the stuff we don't care about, software that does calibration, and even software that moves and saves information and files to the right places whether it is to the satellite or to disks to be sent north later.  As a winterover, I have to know how these systems work and how to fix them if things break.  This could be as simple as rebooting a server or as complicated as reading through tons of log files to try to figure out problems that don't make any sense!  Thankfully, the systems are fairly well designed so it is usually not too much work to fix problems, and I should always have some support from the IceCube members up in the North to help with any really big problems.  Though, in the end, it is the winterovers who have to implement most of these solutions, which is why there is so much training.

This past week I have also been doing some network and system admin training.  I have a background in network administration, so I am not seeing anything too far outside of my experience.  The systems on this network are more advanced than the systems I have used in the past and there is way more thought put into the network as a whole, but the general concepts are pretty much the same.  That being said, I think this would be very difficult and confusing if I didn't have at least somewhat of a networking background.

If anyone was interested in one day working as a winterover for IceCube in the future, I would strongly recommend spending time learning Linux and general network and system administration.  These are the skills that seem to be the most valuable so far.  Spend time breaking and fixing computers.  Installing all sorts of software that other Linux users and system admins use from day to day and try to learn how to use it in interesting ways.  It doesn't hurt to have a PhD in physics, but it really helps to have a solid understanding of bash! (If you don't know what bash is, that might be a good place to start!) I am excited to be a part of IceCube in this capacity and to  see how things work from this perspective, and I am really looking forward to my trip down to the South Pole!

Random Thoughts On Internet Privacy

I am a strong proponent of Tor and Tails.  I have used PGP (via GnuPG) off and on for years.  For those unaware, these technologies are designed to protect anonymity and/or privacy on the internet.  Each may get its own blog post in the future.  So it feels a little odd starting a new website with the purpose of getting all my professional and even personal information out into the eye of the public.

Personally, I do still try to browse anonymously using those technologies and a few others (which I will also post about in the future).  I even run a Tor relay.  I think that more people should be involved with the Tor project.  So, I suppose the question is, "How do I reconcile my desire to remain somewhat anonymous with posting so much personal information?"  I have been thinking, and at least in some respects it comes down to my ability to choose.  I (mostly) choose carefully what gets posted on my website.  I choose what I post on my blog and on social media.  I have actually tried to be careful about what goes out to the interwebs about myself.  I think it is perfectly fair for me to let people see certain aspects of my life without showing them every reddit post I read or every academic article I look at.

One day we could have this same level of control over all of our data.  We may be able to better choose what people see about our activities online.  I think this is still a challenge waiting to be solved, and I am interested to see how it all plays out over the next several years!