Cryptosynchrotron

Without consequences for the guilty

2012-03-02T09:58:00.001+01:00

Spain have recently changed the party in the government. The budget deficit have suffer a deviation of ~27 billion euros. The outer government have closed the numbers in the 6% (~64B€), and the inner government says 8.5% (~91B€). Who can this be possible? What the hell have happened with the money?!

Mathematics are an exact science, and it look macro economics doesn't use mathematics (what the hell means creative financing, can I use it with my salary?). If I made a mistake in my domestic economy of around a 2'5% I'll have a problem. And my problem will have consequences for me (only hoping not to my family).

But in the case of the politician-economists, the consequences are not for them. After this calculations they start with cuts. They apply the consequences to somebody else: to the citizens.

In Greece, they organize a rescue in April 2010. The news have said the the Greek doesn't have the skills to manage their country and its democratic government has been deposed and substituted by some technocratic people from the market election: being a marketcracy. But two years after, too much blood, sweat and tears spilt by the citizens: a second rescue has been "necessary".

All the suffer has been in vain. Markets wants more. This wasn't enough! But does this have consequences for the "inventors" of the first rescue? Are they judged due to their fault?

It's easy to do this adjusts, knowing that to fail doesn't have consequences for you. A normal worker of any company will be fired due to an error of a millionth part of this deviation!

In Spain, the last labour reform (check if it's really the last when you read this, there are too many in short times) have reduced the price to fire a worker. The reason? To create more job positions. Even if they look antonymous, it is an insult to see the bankers millionaire compensations when they have failed in their tasks. And the consequence goes to the base of the workers.

When a worker cannot pay the mortgage, all the family suffers a eviction, but this worker cannot pay because s/he has been fired as a consequence of the more powerful person does a mistake. This more powerful person (politician, or a corporation manager) receive an extra prize for the mistake (in the other of M€) when the worker are evicted.

This worker have this heavy debt forever. Being impossible to pay that even if s/he works again. The consequences due to lost the job are enormous. But a budget deviation of billion euros doesn't cause consequences for the ones who did this numbers.

Have we lived over our possibilities? Or the issue when the rich doesn't have enough, and they like to continue living better and better, and having more and more; event if the consequence is that the poor must live (an die) worst?

marketcracy and demodure

2012-02-20T09:53:00.002+01:00

Occidental countries when on wars like modern crusades to propagate the democracy. Occident have imposed the democracy to the "retarded" countries. We have imposed by force, what we say it's the best way of government. We have deposed tyrannies to impose democracy by the words of the guns. Replace dictadures by demodures.

But at the same time, when the citizen people are requiring something to the governments, they are not listened. People is illiterate and the enlightened is only in the hand of the government. Event if the people is requiring the things pacifically or by violent protest, the lit have it's tools to quiet the protests.

Markets are forcing countries to suspend the democracies (with casino practices). Now is the market abstraction who talks with our representatives and they translate to the people what have been transmitted to them.

In the marketcracy, we vote to choose the interlocutor to the oracle of the market. And our representatives obeys to its designate justifying the sacrifices that the people must do (not apply it to the representatives or the rich).

In the name of the gods money and debt, we have to kill a virgin worker every hour or they will became angry and the consequences will be worst.

I have to insist, this gods doesn't exist.

Chasing the higgs

2012-02-06T13:21:00.001+01:00

Since December many words has been written about the Higgs search in the high energy physics. Recently I have read in the Spanish translation of the "Scientific American" (called "Investigación y Ciencia") a text (not a peer reviewed article) about the Higgs that I think is specially good for newbies in this field.

Usually the blog who talks about the Higgs often uses many technical words and graphics. Nothing to say about the images drawings like:

From cms web site

In my words (I'm a computer scientist, neither this is peer reviewed!). When you remove everything from a portion of the space to have it in the highest possible vacuum, there is still something there. This vacuum have some entity, a non zero field that fills everything. This field, dramatically can make you think in the idea of the ether, but it's should be completely different.

The standard model have some mathematical transformations (usually named symmetries) who not only gives beauty to the theory, it has many behaviour consequences specially in between the interactions.

Physicist knows very well the fundamental interactions (electromagnetic, nuclear week, and strong, and also the oldest we know even if it's the one we know less about, the gravitation). This forces are a consequence from this mathematical symmetries in the standard model. This explains many properties of the particles, except one "small" detail: the mass.

This symmetries in the model says that the mater particles shouldn't have mass, but we know it's there. Even more, the force carrier particles shouldn't have mass, and in general they hasn't, but the bosons W and Z have mass.

In the 60's, Sheldon Glashow, Steven Wienberg and Abdus Salam (they are 1979 Physics Nobel Price) introduces the Higgs mechanism (proposed 1962 by Philip Warren Anderson and developed in 1964 by three independent groups, in one of them were Peter Higgs). The idea is simple, this field can be imagined like a viscose liquid who fills completely all the space, and the friction on this liquid gives to the particles what we see as mass. The waves made on this liquid when the particles agitates it, are the the higgs particles.

Some particles flow better in this higgs field, and looks like they have a very small mass. Some others have a big interaction and looks like very massive. And there are particles who didn't interact at all with it, being unmassed.

What are high energy physics colliders searching for? It's highly difficult to detect the higgs particles itself, and much more complicate because they decay very fast. But what it's possible to detect are the products of this disintegrations. What the LHC (and its predecessors) is trying to see in the detectors (specially Atlas and CMS) are this subproducts of the disintegration. Even that this events where they appear, are very difficult to detect.

The LEP (LHC predecessor were the tunnel is the same) has set a lower limit in 114GeV and the highest level would be at 800GeV. But with the results published in the 13th of December, this window has been reduces with a trust of the 95%, in two smaller windows. One between 600GeV and 800GeV (but other experimental results may exclude this window). and the most hopped window is between 115GeV and 128GeV (indirect results of the LEP studies also points to this window). Even more, this window have a substantial probability to have the higgs in between 125GeV and 126GeV.

But this doesn't mean that the higgs exist. There is also a probability that the higgs doesn't exist and the excesses detected are statistical fluctuations and systematic errors... This 2012 the analysis will have much more data. Last week there were the LHC performance workshop where has been decided the setup for the collider this year. Beams energy increased to 4TeV (collisions @ 8TeV), bunches separation of 25ns (they were 50ns, means the double of bunches in the beam, with a pile-up effect), and reduced the beta-star parameter to increase the luminosity (from 1m to 60cm).

21th of March will start again the beam operations.

Update 20120213: Some news point to 4 TeV beam (colliding at 8TeV) with 50ns bunch separation and beta-star at 0.6. Not very different that 2011 configuration, but enough to have the 16.5/fb collisions predicted to be enough to find the Higgs.

Work from home or what you like

2012-02-02T12:57:00.001+01:00

Today, due to the snow in the vicinity, the loudspeakers in Alba's facility have order an unscheduled shutdown of the machine and its beamlines. All the workers had to left the building to go home. Further information to the workers will be sent by email.

Situation like that had happen the past 8th of March in 2010 (picture taken @ 15:12):

I think will not be the same than today @ 10:22:

It's not usual to have snow in the area of Barcelona, but the pictures are very similar. I hope we will not live the chaos of 2010. We would had to learn something...

Update 20120203: Finally the snow wasn't chaotic. Even that the photos are very similar, in 2010 the picture has been taken at the time when the storm went to worse. It was the beginning. After 1 hour the storm was harder, and at 2 hour huge transport problems collapse communications.

Yesterday, the picture has been take when, after we saw, the maximum of the precipitation. At midday, the news says that in the afternoon would have something like an storm. But the clouds went throw the sea, with any other problem for the people.

We've been lucky this time. You only know if it's overreacting or underreacting when you look it from the future. But if you have to choose, it's better to decay to overreact than underreact.

Ring magnetic field compensation

2012-01-26T10:41:00.001+01:00

A long time a go we have seen that when the magnets of the storage ring are cycling the beam on the linac "moves". I remember a day in the control room of Alba doing a test on the cycling procedure (no beam in the storage, the machine was mine) I hear the scientist working on the linac, just in a computer besides the one I was using, saying "We are not changing anything and the beam is moving horizontally!"

AFAIK the problem is coming from the thing that the bending magnet of the storage ring (and the same thing with each family of sextupoles) are powered from the same power converter. There is one power converter in sector 1 for all the (32) storage ring bending magnets. Each magnet is a solenoid, but the cable to distribute the power to all of them can be saw globally like on big solenoid with one turn.

In the storage ring, there are also 9 families of sextupoles, each of them powered by converters also placed in sector 1, with the same situation than the bendings. This means that, globally, we have 10 solenoids of one turn of 268.8 meters.

(There are also 14 families of quadrupoles, but in that case there is one power converter per sector and is not contributing to this problem.)

How to compensate this? The problem is not when the storage ring magnets are cycling, the issue is when this magnets have set different currents due to many different purposes forces to reconfigure the linac. The easy and smarter solution perhaps is to install another turn to compensate the effect.

Then when the setting of the storage changes, the current of one extra power converter changes to cancel the effect on the linac. But calculate and apply new current values it's a boring thing for a human. Often I say the repetitive and boring task are good for computers, and gives free time to humans.

One detail more, some of the magnet turns goes clockwise direction in the storage ring, and some others goes in counter-clockwise direction. That means that they already cancels some of their effects but 0 effect is not grant. That the goal of this compensation turn.

A device server class with the name "RingMagnetCompensarion" is the responsible in the control system to calculate the current to set in the power converter for the compensation turn. This device has some properties:

[Counter]ClockWise: two lists of magnet device server names
MagnetAttr: name of the attribute to read/subscribe on the magnets of the lists
CompensationMagnet: name of the device server where the calculated compensation current will be written
AttrThreadSleep: Expert property to fine adjust of the refresh on the threaded option of the magnets current refresh

How it works? When the device is started, it composes the lists of clockwise (cw) and counterclockwise (ccw) in two different magnet groups. In the constructor, each of this magnet groups will create a list of particular magnets. And are this particular magnets the ones responsible for each reading on the devices of the power converters.

This Magnet class, checks if the attribute to read in the power converter device server have events or not. In case of event, it subscribes to it, but if not, if does a polling to read if the current have changed.

When a magnet object receives from its attrManager the notification of a readback change, this is propagated to the magnetGroup parent object. Why? Because this with update the cw/ccw list of currents and update the summatory. With this summatory updated, it's time to notify the RingMagnetCompensation device to calculate the formula:

Then only rest the event propagation and to write in the compensation power converter device if it's necessary.

Issues: One detected issue that has been already fix is when the magnets are cycling. The compensation power converter range is between 50A to -50A, and during cycling procedure this can be out of this range. Then each magnet object checks if the subdevice have received a command Cycle() to cut the propagation of readback change.

Another issues is the SlewRate of all the power converters involved. This has not tested yet, but it's possible that the speed changing the current in the compensation power converter would be not faster enough to a live response against the current changes on all the magnets in the lists.

Alba Synchrotron Vacancies

2012-01-25T13:18:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, 3 new job offers has been publish in the Alba's website with a few minutes of delay between them:

First was the Accelerator Division Head:

A few minutes later, a position for Experiments Division Head:

And finally, also with a small number of minutes delay, a position for a Director of the facility:

Differences between this offers are "minimals". I mean, for sure they have different functions, but the conditions looks to be the same.

We are still having an acting director and even if the previous experiment division head says that we didn't suffer the Spanish cuts, the reality is that we suffer salaries cuts. All the personnel of Alba (cells) have our salary cut due to a Spanish law. If anyone can think that the cuts didn't affect us, see also that many people left the company during next months after the cut.

But not every thing is bad. A few days a go, the call for experiments proposals from the user office, have finish and we have received hundreds of them. And not only from inside Spain.

First friendly users will come very soon. We are almost ready:

Hollywood industry origin against piracy

2012-01-24T14:35:00.001+01:00

Which was the origin of Hollywood? I have read what wikipedia says in the third paragraph of the previous link:

Various producers and filmmakers moved bases from the east coast to escape punitive licensing from the Motion Picture Patents Company.

A funny reading of that can be, the ones who nowadays are "injured" due to the piracy have started their business with tricks to avoid payments on a patent. The ones who nowadays are moving the flag about the intellectual property menace against piracy, they was the ones who escape the law.

Sure this doesn't represent all the entertainment industry, but even thinking that the ones who escape from this punitive licensing are a minority of this producers and filmmakers, their group origins are "affected" by that.

Many voices, victim like, are justifying the FBI action of the shutdown of megaupload to say that this place is stealing their incomings. But what about the people, with contents in megaupload without a problem of copyright that with this action are being affected? This action is affecting people with less money than the entertainment industry, but the police is not protecting them.

Furthermore, what's the cost of this international operation? Are the governments of this world expending the same number of money trying to clarify the world's bank crisis/fraud? Are this governments fighting against speculation on the markets, specially in the field of the price of the food? Although the money doesn't exist, the cost of the banks black hole is much bigger than the calculated to eradicate the world's poverty in less than one generation.

It is also ridiculous to see the public show on the TVs with images of the big house of the main boss of megaupload (how big is the house, the number of cars he have and the words he put in the plates, his eccentricities in an european cannonball, the guns he would have at home,...). But what do you expect to find in the big houses of the bosses of the entertainment and similar industries? Do they have less eccentricities? They can't reach the end of the month with their salaries?

It looks like a try to break the public image of this people. It remembers me the George Orwel's 1984. When the people was arrested, a long list of bad actions are repeated everywhere to criminalize the person.

I'm not defending, I'm only talking about the public circus created to change/manipulate opinions. This action is not to fix the problems for the common good, it's only to improve the incomings of the ones who have lots of it.

Free internet services

2012-01-23T10:29:00.000+01:00

When a dog is bought in a pet shop, the animal has a family for free. It's like when you have a free service (as a free beer) on internet, it means that you are the product...

SOPA protest

2012-01-18T09:52:00.000+01:00

Today is one of the days where many internet services are protesting against SOPA (Stop On-line Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). In Spain there is also a similar Act under the name "ley Sinde". There are many reasons to protest to some law like this ones.

Why the governments are acting against the intellectual property issues harder than the economical fraud?

What is worst, do not pay the contribution to the state or to referee here to hamlet:

Hamlet:
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
    breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
    but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
    were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
    proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
    my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
    imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
    in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
    between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
    all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
    Where's your father?
Hamlet, act 3 scene 1.

Sardana control application

2011-12-22T21:31:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, one of the gurus of Tango and project leader of Sardana presents an internal seminar for the control system section in Alba:

One of the images that I like more to represent the meaning of this Sardana package is one:

In the upper layer we have the area of the presentation layer, where we develop taurus. Is the screens with the user interacts. How you manage the coordination of the movements together with the acquisition in not the business of the final user. Even more, they don't case about how you did it, they only want the thing running with reliability.

Also there is the possibility for the user to have a user interface based in a command line screen, and for this there is spock (is an ipython console with the philosophy of spec):

But furthermore than a console usage of a beamline, the GeneralBeamlineGui is the best example of the use of taurus, together with Sardana to have a full control of a beamline to do the experiements. With a layout of the beamline the user can click on the elements to know the details of each instrument in the beamline.

Christmas shutdown

2011-12-22T17:44:00.000+01:00

Today, more specific, this night will start the Christmas shutdown.

This are running well, and it's very interesting to have the shutdown were they are planned...

Postscriptum: How many synchrotrons can show an snapshot of the machine status with absolutely all the frontends open? But they have much more beamlines. The probability to have this situation is much bigger being in beamlines commissioning and having only 7 beamlines.

Alba's Director vacancy (III)

2011-12-21T18:08:00.000+01:00

Official announcement! We will have to get use about this kind of things. It's very grateful to have a different think than weird rumours that you don't know if it's true or fake.

Focus on the President of the executive commission communication to all the Alba's workers: it's official that we already have an acting director. That is an worker who is already knowing in Alba, who will carry the directorate duties. It's a person who is already working here.

The CELLS Rector Council have decide to open again the position to call for directors. This will take some time. Let see how the things will go in the behaviour of this little ecosystem of the synchrotron.

European Spallation Source, Bilbao

2011-12-21T09:37:00.000+01:00

In Spain, is under construction another science facility different and complementary to Alba synchrotron: An Spallation Source in Bilbao.

This facility is one of the options to have a neutron source, and it's the only option that doesn't have a nuclear plant to get this fast free neutrons.

In the media area of the ESSBilbao website, there is a video with an explanation of the project. That is much more than what we have in Alba (I've seen a very few official video of our facility, but they are not promoted in our website).

Another video that looks interesting to follow what's a spallation source, is from the ESS Scandinavia, from where the Bilbao's project is child.

An Spallator can be resumed as a large proton linear accelerator with a metal target at the end of the line, where the impact of the fast protons produces free and fast neutrons in many directions.

There is another video, a bit larger, that shows something more about an Spallation source:

Finally, I like to mention that the website of ESS-Bilbao is in 3 languages: International English and the two local languages: Basque and Spanish. With this, some local people without knowing English can read the website content (perhaps because the study when is Spain the foreign language was French, not all the public must be young-scientist). In Alba, everything is in English, we are not open enough to one closest public.

debt, money and credit

2011-12-15T17:37:00.001+01:00

Two months a go I have write some ideas about money. Yesterday I read the Spanish translation of an interview to David Graeber (I think this is the original in English). I didn't read before about this guy, who is described in Wikipedia as "American anthropologist and anarchist".

It's interesting what he says about the origin of the money, specially the sequence between credit, debt and money. Before the existence of money, there where already credit and debt. And the coinage of the money was (at least in the mentioned cases) the solution to pay the troops. The people who produces something, had something to exchange, but the troops needs coins to get things. This coins are after requested by the boss to the people to pay the taxes to pay the troops.

It's also interesting from this interview reading that the debt make slaves. How the extortion can create and produce a relation of debt. Changing what is said there with the word "Mafiosi" by "the markets", and "extortion" by "speculation" you can describe the current situation of this "European debt crisis".

But still the money doesn't exist. Yes, today the banknotes and the e-cash are used all the days by (almost) every one. We all are in the loop, specially in the loop of the debt more than in the richness. Renting your arms in a factory for a salary, is the way of debt. Non of the ones who have accumulated richness have get it working hard 40 years in a factory. We lived over our possibilities? Well, you can be agree or not, the thing is that the ones who says that to the PIGS are still living with in the same good way than before.

Governments have to generate debt to pay the black holes of the banks, and this debt is bought by the banks who next will request money to the governments. This is like a pyramidal trick, there is no way to get out of it. Maybe only with the system reset.

Alba's Director vacancy (II)

2011-12-02T19:44:00.001+01:00

Finally! We have got an official announcement! Today the President of the executive commission (just above the directors position) have sent an email to all the Alba's stuff.

Then: official announcement that we don't have director. Yesterday I have wrote about this. Also it's official that the Rector Council of the CELLS consortium have nominated a new director, but some paperwork pending. Finally this selected person have rejected the position due to personal reasons.

Now the position is now open again, and the President have said that he will keep us informed. Only with this it's a big change in the relation with the workers.

This synchrotron project will continue as it's planned. In a few months, we will receive the first scientist to use the facility. I feel this change is the beginning of a new era in Alba. I hope I'm not being to optimistic, many inertias must change. Cooperate in the efforts for this start up, means many things, including don't refuse a proposal of agreement about work condition because it comes from the workers side.

With common sense and good intentions we can reach the balance, having back the smell the illusion in the corridors of this synchrotron.

Alba's Director vacancy

2011-11-30T19:52:00.001+01:00

Today the Alba's director has sent an email to all staff. In this email he had announced that he is leaving the director's position. Is also written in this email that this has been plan, by him, due to the enter in operation. But, as far as the first users will arrive later Easter, this announcement doesn't mach.

We are still in commissioning, and the maximum current accumulated in the storage ring is 200mA. We are still working hard and doing our best to have the machine up and running at 400mA, the design and expected accumulated current. Some of the problems of this institution didn't have relation with synchrotron business. Not only the salary cut, or disguise Experiments head firing. But many that I have not dared to write because I was afraid of the personal consequences. And I still have my doubts to write it.

It's fun that the email sent to all staff say thanks to most of the stuff for the work well done. Not to all the staff, only for a subgroup. Perhaps this subgroup is the people that has been invited today in a farewell that has take place today in a meeting room with the window blinds down.

After this vip farewell, some people who was there, explains that the candidate to new director have rejected the offer. But this is a rumor. Rumors... Alba lives in rumors we are not use to official announcements. The thing of that we had a new director candidate, is a rumor; the thing that there was a previous candidate who rejects the position some months a go, is a rumor; the thing that the management board doesn't have a meeting since 3 years, is a rumor. Do I have to continue? I feel really sad about how the things was done. But I still have the hope that the issue about our management will be fix, and we will be able to focus in usual problems (engineering, scientific,...) of one research facility.

New milestone reached: 200mA in the storage ring

2011-11-29T08:33:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, 28 of November, about 19h local time, the storage ring of Alba have reached a new record in the accumulated beam: 200mA. (machine is design to work at 400 mA)

Photo of one of the screens in the Alba's place with the machine status

The head of the accelerators division have send an email to all the stuff in Alba, thanking all of us and saying that this is not only a success of Accelerators Division, it's a success of all the Alba's team and we like to share this milestone with all of us.

Photo taken the 26 of Nov, from the EC-JQK

This kind of small details contribute to the behaviour of the Alba's workers. Small things that made easy the live, and encourages to do more. It's the base of the workers the ones who are doing this. Even the dangers that one can find in the corridors.

Also I like to mention that yesterday I have reach one of my goals having a cycling of all the magnets of the storage ring with out any of them failing. I still have some problems with the setpoint on this power converters, but they are reduced from the 15% (when I have take the project) to the current 0'1% error rate. But I still like to reduce this to 0%. The device must be the last responsible to apply a setpoint. If the user tells the device, it has to insist until exhaust and it's not easy to leave a process exhaust.

Trend with all the storage ring magnets cycled

Alba's Call for Proposals for 2012 Beamtime Allocation

2011-11-24T13:28:00.001+01:00

With an email to the AUSE mail list, I have receive the news about the Alba's user office: The call for proposals is open!

Now we are in commissioning and it goes very well and fast. We are reaching many goals each week. Afaik, at the beginning of next year we will have the friendly users: a very patient scientist who will do real experiments knowing that they are doing it in side the commissioning.

In the header of the Alba's user office, there is a tab labelled "call for proposals 2012". I cannot put a link to this due to a "season id", but I can snapshot it:

The only way to submit proposals will be this site of the user office. Create a user there is mandatory to be able to submit. Before that, is said that can be good to contact the scientist of the beamline if you have special requirements. I think this would be better to be included in the proposal and evaluated by who will have to develop it, to know who long is need to allocate this beamtime in a reasonable date.

The start-up of the beamlines will be gradual after Easter, but before come to Alba to do the experiment in the allocated beamtime, the user's must complain with the Safety Requirements:

It will be fun this thing about the exam, because after many years working where I never did an exam about Safety. He have received some trainings about Safety, but never checked the knowledge assimilated in this training.

We will see. If there is any reader who likes to come to Alba to do experiments, now it's time to do the paper work! Good luck!

Alba Machine Status

2011-10-27T17:53:00.001+02:00

Trying to get pagerank to the Alba's machine status, I like to mention that the beamline 4 is doing their best to start with the commissioning. It's the MSPD on the top left of this machine status and recently we have added the information about its insetion device:

All the 7 beamlines have opened the frontend and they have received their X-rays but this commissioning is ongoing. Some times we go faster than expected, sometimes we have unsolvable problems. But we are doing efforts to be faster than expected.

Next week, the machine will be shutdown to allow us to do some works in side the tunnel.

Galileo's one day (more) delay

2011-10-20T14:58:00.003+02:00

I have work in the Galileo's Gstb-dsf project a long time a go. At that time, many times have said that Galileo was about to be launching satellites, but the Giove delays I understand that we should wait. I've been waiting for today during years and I can wait for one day more.

But I don't like to talk about this delays and the big amount of money that they would cost, apart to the cost of the system itself.

Don't wanna forget Glonass (Rusian) and the Compass project (Chinese-European) , but my knowledge is more about GPS and GNSS (Galileo). What's the difference between this two systems? All this satellite systems lives in the medium earth orbit (about 20000km from earth surface), how can they be different? The name says the difference: The Gps is a positioning system, and Galileo is made for navigation. Motion is the difference, and this difference is given by precision.

The mathematics behind it are the same in all this systems. But how this precision is given? By the time... Yes, the precision given by the location systems is given by how precise is the clock in the satellite and the information provided in the broadcast of the signal. Part of this signal can be emitted encrypted to only allow to certain users to access to the complete time stamp.

The other difference between gps and galileo is the orientation of the service. Gps is a military project from the US, because of that the main goal of the system is the availability for military applications, and the civilian service is a secondary thing. The precision of the system, then, depends of which type of user you are. But Galileo is civilian from scratch, even this doesn't mean open for every one.

Galileo will have an open access signal, accessible by every one like gps, with some better presision. But there will have some levels more:

Commertial: Paying a price, the user will have the right for a controlled access for commercial applications who require more more than the basic, and a warranty on the service.
Regulated: Paying another price, it's oriented to high security applications who cannot suffer interruption or distortion due to its security reasons.

Don't be to paranoid, the Regulated is thinking in civil aeronautics. Having the main improvement in the vertical precision and the 99% of availability warranted. I hope emergency location beacon systems will have access to Regulated by default, not having devices to some safety and some better, more expensive.

Update 20111021: liftoff!

starting the beamline commissioning

2011-10-18T16:48:00.005+02:00

In the Alba synchotron we are reaching some goals day after day. During this last years we have started up the linac, the booster and, this year, the storage ring. Also, this year, we have opened the frontend in some beamlines. Starting in march with Mistral's beamline, and the first x-ray light in Alba (a bit before in the diagnostics beamline with visible light), we continue opening 4 of the 7 beamlines at the end of May.

Today is the day to start the beamlines commissioning. During the day there are some hour planed to have machine physics and some hours planed to delivery beam to the beamlines:

Step by step, with a low current in the storage, we are opening frontends.

(The machine status is not yet public, like it's usual, we have to be happy with snapshots).

Update @ 20111019:
I don't have an snapshot of the machine status with more frontends open, but it's a thing of opportunity: to be looking on this application in the correct moment.

Update @ 20111024: The machine status can be saw from out side. But not yet searchable from google or the "search" in the cells website.

Money doesn't exist

2011-10-15T13:35:00.001+02:00

In the Tang dynasty, something starts changing. Since then the money starts to have another representation: the banknote. This, that have seen as an improvement because the traders doesn't need to carry the weight of the metal pieces. They has been able to travel in the empire with the possibility to exchange the paper into money based on metal. An at that time, the paper had a meaning in precious metal.

From that time to our days many times the "smart" leaders have realize how easy is to print more paper that the precious metal that they have.

The last time that this solution have set is a very big historical event in the richness of the world, it was when the US president Nixon breaks the direct conversion between the dollar and the gold. After that all the meaning of money is that it's something that can be exchanged for goods. It's only based in our trust on its value. At that time, the meaning of money have change.

Even worst, today we have one hack further: the electronic money. Now it's not necessary to have the banknotes in a safe who backup the e-cash. Like with the gold coverage brake, but worst. If previously was easier to print a paper than have a precious metal: have a couple of bits in a computer is even easier.

Why, with today's world crisis, the concept of the money have an even worst meaning? Apart of the problem with the meaning of the money, the concept of the debt is corrupted by the economics engineering. It doesn't have sense when I hear that Greece have cheat in the numbers many years a go helped by banks. The rating agencies are trying to clean their faces saying that now they are doing their task (not having everyone with the "excellent") but not assuming responsibilities in the subprimes and the huge collapse in 2008.

After this brake down in the (north-occidental) world, the IMF, have said to the involved democracies what they have to do. But the ones who applied they medecine are not in the path of solution, but the ones who did the opposite way are improving (iceland). Even that, the orders that this IMF are saying to the countries, for example about the retirement, it doesn't corresponds with what they do to itself.

Even forcing some of the PIGS to make changes on their constitution, Belgium have been in a political crisis on about 480 days without government. During this time their economy has been not enormously affected by the world crisis, far from that, their economy grew during this period of frozen budgets and laws. We may learn from the Belgium "solution".

The ECB also dictate its will to Italy and Spain (at minimum) to have their "service" or "protection". When the ECB is loaning cheap money to the banks, and this banks are loaning countries like Greece with a much bigger interest, the meaning of this institutions are loosing its meaning.

There is money to save and rescue the banks and don't left them abandoned to the markets. This new money can be new circulating money (like print more banknotes) or injecting money in soft credits to the banks (like creating bits of e-cash in a server). This to fix the banks' cheating, doubling money using the fractional reserve. That is, only a fraction of the deposits are "in the safe", there is a part that can be moved by the bank to produce more money. But then this money can be count in different ways, two, three or many times. The same money can be counter by me, by you, maybe by a third.

But the countries are left to its luck in the markets (where this banks play). There is no money for the social politics, we have lived out of our possibilities and we have to reduce the budget. But rescuing banks and paying enormous compensations to fire its executives who fails in its task. It's possible to "print" new e-cash to save the banks (with an inflation risk), but due to this risk this cannot be done for the countries.

But their big numbers are related with the normal people, who live normal lives. When they fail in economics, all of us suffers, but not them. Perhaps, they will have a headache because a crash in the market. But for the normal people this means a problem to eat during all the month. An this is not only headache, is also stomach ache...

In the Madrid's community, there is no money for the education. But the visit of the Catholic pope to this community cost more money than this cut. And this is only the community investment on this act, because many companies have "donate" money to this act in exchange on some fiscal benefits (due to that I have remembered the expulsion of the money-changers of Christ in the temple).

In Catalunya, even that in 2003 the gasoline have add a new tax called "sanitary cent". But further than a cent, it was a percentage corresponding to a cent on that year. Even that in 2008, Brussels say this tax is not legal, our politics refuses to remove it. This tax has been made to pay the sanitary bill, and they say is strictly necessary to avoid other less popular measures like the co-payment (you pay something "symbolic" every time that you visit the doctor). But now, 2011, they still talk about this co-payment and still say they don't have enough money to pay sanity service.

They never have enough! A solution for today is only an excuse. What they say today can be the opposite of what they will say tomorrow.

And in Catalunya there is another example of what I see as this economics engineering swindle. How can be possible that the debt of the Catalan government depends on the "column" where somebody puts the cost of a metro line of the Barcelona's city? This is a cost, an inversion, a money paid to the providers (and probably to be paid to the creditors). It doesn't have sense that the numbers can be "make-up" this level. It's unacceptable that in economics the result is fussy depending on how you did the numbers.

Now Portugal have cut the special payments for Christmas and summer. Back to Catalunya, the region government have said that their executives will not receive their Christmas payment this year. The news said that they will save 1.8M€ and the measure will affect about 350 persons. Easy 1'8M€ / 350px ~ 5000€/px: they are not in the media of salaries. Why there is no consequences to this "executives" when they fail in their task? But my doubt is which will be the workaround to pay them using another "ways"?

In the rescued banks (using "public" money) is even worst: the bank managers receive tones of money to be fired. If I do such a mistake like they did in my job, I'll be fired with out any payment, and probably with a lawsuit.

There are millions of persons unemployed in Spain (and the rest of the PIGS, and in the rest of the world). But locally it looks more like a lockout. Since 2008, many companies have instrumentalized this crisis for a cheapness firing the workers and reduce the salaries of the ones who "survive" to their burn. With this crisis, this country is only making big and deeper the bags of poverty. Making the social fracture much bigger. The ones that have more are have even more, the ones that have something are pushed together with the ones who already didn't have nothing before the crisis.

My conclusion is that the representation of the meaning of the richness has been lost. The hack of the banknotes and the mistake that is print more banknotes that the precious metal in the safe has go one step further: the mistake of generate more e-cash than the banknotes the supports this bits. The central banks are injecting this e-cash to big hole of the multiple-counting made by the banks, making this multi-count real or signed by this authorities (e-cash emission using bank soft credits). And to contain their hyperinflation, they force the final citizen to be push to the poorness cutting the social goodness and the menace of the unemployment.

The unemployed people doesn't have money to exchange for goods, but the ones who still have a jobs doesn't know for how long it is, and doesn't exchange their e-cash. This is what is avoiding an issue of removing the banknotes from the banks. The banks are being saved to maintain the confidence of the people in the e-cash. Because behind the e-cash, there is no banknotes, behind there is no precious metals, behind there is no richness.

Behind the capital and the speculation there is nothing. The production of goods is less productive in this society than generations of hacks to cover mistakes. This society is an imaginary giant made by real feed of mud.

Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-13T15:57:00.003+02:00

A few days a go, a Very Important Person in the computers world have died. Even that the news has been talk only about an Important Person, and many people can think the Steve Jobs have made a revolution in computers, Dennis Ritchie, in my opinion, have more important goals to receive the "very" in the vip status.

Without his work on Unix (and previously on Multics) together with Ken Thompson and Brian Kerninghan, the Mac operation system wouldn't be possible. Yes it's true that Mac have had many good ideas on usability, but it has many lines written in C, a high level programming language designed by Ritchie and the contribution, again, of Kerninghan. Almost all the computer scientist have on mind Kernighan&Ritchie, and the ones who doesn't probably have problem.

Cycling magnets

2011-09-04T14:03:00.000+02:00

Since I've been in charge of the control of the power supplies of Alba synchrotron, I have discover many new things. After more than four years an absolute new world is in front of me.

One special thing that we do with the magnets is to cycle them. But what does this mean?

The magnet hysteresis is the reason of this procedure: the magnetic field produced by an electromagnet is function of the current applied by the power converter, but it has a path dependency. Or is not the same to arrive to one position if you come from different places. Also it have dependency on the length of the magnet but this is constant, at least in our ones.

From a very simplistic view, what I understand about this is a graphic like:

Where to arrive to one position on the green line, for example 0.95T you have to set a current of 480A (assuming a magnet of 1m to simplify, and all the numbers are my inventions). But depending from where you arrive to this current you will be on one of the black lines. Then you will have a magnetic field between 0.89T and 0.98T, but not exactly what you want.

The solution is to cycle the magnet, this means, from the current where you know the green line for the magnetic field you want do a procedure to the maximum current to the minimum and to the maximum again to run in the red line. Do it again and you will be in the green line to finally go the the setpoint and you have the expected magnetic filed.

The procedure it's easy: setpoint-max-min-max-min-max-setpoint. But how to make this automatic?

Cycling of all the storage ring magnets (with the new approach)

The first approach we did was using the Sardana Control User Environment. A very abstract view of a magnets can be like a motor: you have many positions not in distance unit (meters, millimeters microns,...) , but in current unit (Amperes) of the electromagnet.

This has been working well for a long time. The users can do this procedure in a automatic way, but the read back of the power converters some times is a bad player.

The approach using a macro have some implications and a collateral damage. A macro is launched and the MacroServer is the device in charge to run this together. All the magnets selected by the user have a controller in a Pool of motors, and the MacroServer is able to coordinate motors from many different Pools. This pool motor controller is the one who bridges the communication to the power a supply device server offering a interface to the upper layers.

The issues appears when the device of the power converter shows glitch on the current read back. Is not a thing that changes the magnetic field, but is a thing that changes the state of the device to moving. The controller is propagating this to the pool.

If due to any casual planet alignment the pool receives the move command, during a glitch it trigger an exception because it can not distinguish the glitch to a real movement commanded from somewhere else. This has a very small probability, but if you add enough magnets this can happen more often. And if you add that when this happens, the cycling of all the other magnets is cancelled the cycling would be restarted and is possible that next time another magnet has a glitch.

How this can be fix? Who has the responsible to cycle the magnets in the old solution? The macro. But it has some problems with the bad guys of the magnets. Even if we mask this glitch behavior (thing that we did), the main design issue is that a problem of one participant, disturbs all the others. Sardana needs this feature because it is a feature need for coordinated movements.

The new approach:
Each magnet is responsible of itself.

Further than coordinate the cycling, why not make each magnet (the tango device of the power supply) responsible of itself cycling?

Introducing a command to the device we have what was the macro in side of this power converter control. A problem in one magnet will only affect this magnet. All the others will continue their procedures. If the operator saw something in one of the magnets can abort the cycling of this one, letting the others cycling.

In the second image of this post, of a taurustrend, with the cycling of the storage ring magnets is possible to see that the quadrupoles and sextupoles are independent to the bending. They have a smaller current range for cycling, and they finish early. Even more, if you look the quadrupoles and sextupoles, they are accumulating a shift during this cycle, and the ones with a smaller range finishes a bit early that the others.

Cycling the booster to storage transferline

More evident can be in the booster to storage transferline. The correctors, with a range of [-5A,5A] finishes about a minute before than the other big magnets. And between the other big magnets, here they have different currents and show this shifting better.

The result on the real hardware test of last Friday was succeed (also testing many abort cases) for Hazemeyer storage ring power supplies and for the Bruker linac to booster and booster to storage transferlines power supplies.

As far as I know, we reduce a procedure that can take very long by hand to a 4 minutes automatic process. That is an example of what the controls section tries to do: make scientist "lives" easier to allow them to focus in what they like, do research, do science.

Update 20110907: As usual, asking you get more info. Why this cycling procedure is working? It's not, like I said a max-min iteration: it's a sinusoidal function approach. Due to the ramp (speed of the current motion in Amperes per second) and the acceleration and deceleration close to the setpoint this procedure does somenthing quite similar to a sinusoidal function and give this property to fix the hysteresis.

Brookhaven National Laboratory: NSLS

2011-09-03T09:27:00.001+02:00

This summer in Alba we have received a visit of a scientist of the NSLS-II, and he did a seminar about this machine under construction.

They have a background on synchrotrons. The have a machine close to the 30th anniversary, the NSLS-I. It is one of the firsts 2nd generation synchrotrons, and it have to very different submachines the VUV (with the 30th aniversary in 2012), and the Xray (30 years in 2014).

NSLS-I layout

The seminar was about the their new beamlines in the NSLS-II project, but reading about this machine with two storages rings opens my curiosity.

The machine status gui must have some peculiarities; or to have some of this guis. From the point of view that can be saw as one machine, there is one machine status.

Different beam energies, different accumulated currents and different live times. Very different behaviors of this to storage rings. The availability of the beam for x-ray ring is longer than 10 hours but the refilling time looks to be about an hour, then this seems to be a limit for a time resolution experiment. The ring for vuv have much smaller live time, 3 hour, but the refilling looks fast.

From my poor acknowledge (almost null) it's weird that the vuv, with more current have an easier refilling. Probably more boosted beams are need to accumulate, but it's a less energetic beam.

Living the commissioning of Alba, I don't wanna imagine how can be a commissioning of a booster with different rampings of the magnets depending on the destination storage ring. Also the radio frequency must be different. It looks to be like two completely different commissionings for the same booster.

Spanish constitution

2011-09-02T08:58:00.001+02:00

This august, and in a urgent way, spanish parliament has started a modification of the Spanish constitution. Like al the laws they can be changed, but the answer to any request to modify this constitution has been always "NO".

Spain is a monarchy. During the lasts years we have had the discussion in the media and between the politicians and the pro-monoarchy about the convenience to modify this constitution for better equality of generate. What that means?

From the child of the king of Spain, the women can only inherit if no men has born. Than means if they have 7 child and the 7th is a boy, the previous 6 women will not be queen (even if they are better or not).

But after a long time says that is not easy to modify the constitution, because this request 2/3 of the parliament and a dissolution of it self after the modification and a referendum... This time the modification can be done without the plebs referendum and very very fast: in less than a month...

The issue of this modification is more than what the media-news says. Is not only a thing of the top on the debt, is not the issue of not ask the "demos" of this "democracy", in my opinion is the introduction of a sentence: "135.3 (...)y su pago gozará de prioridad absoluta.(...)" (and its payment will have absolute priority).

I'm not an economist, but more than a modification to avoid a too big debt, it's a modification to avoid to follow the way of Iceland. I think that because also "135.4 Los límites de déficit estructural y de volumen de deuda pública sólo podrán superarse en caso de catástrofes naturales, recesión económica o situaciones de emergencia extraordinaria que escapen al control del Estado (...)" (this debt limits can be exceeded in some cases, one is an economic crisis, like we have now). This don't fix the current "problem" of the debt, because there is an exception for a case like where we are. One of the things that fixes is to make unconstitutional the Iceland solution.

Update: It looks like the Iceland solution have had better results than Ireland's. Just the countries who follows the rules of the IMF, the ECB and the rest of experts, are still in crisis with out symptoms of recovery.

PyTango in Ubuntu natty

2011-08-13T21:36:00.000+02:00

I have installed the lastest relase of kubuntu in a new computer and there is a better newer way to have tango installed in your system than the guide for tango that I have posted

Tango has been released for 10.04 LTS distribution of ubuntu by one of the developers: Alessio Igor Bogani, worker in Trieste's synchrotron: Elettra. After that the idea have had succeed and we have a official repository for core of tango.

Then: I had s pending to publish a how to for this repository and mark the old one saying that here is this update. Well go ahead.

step 0: Remove older tango-cs packages
If you have installed this abogani's repository, is better if you remove its packages and then remove the file in the '/etc/apt/sources.list.d/abogani-tango-

.list'.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tango-controls/core

This also adds for you the key of this repository in your keyring and the file 'tango-controls-core-.list' file.

Like in the abogani's way here there are two ways to continue: with or without tango-db. The second way assumes that there is another server with the tango database running.

step 1, option with db:

If mysql is not installed in the system do it. I am not sure if this works well being executed in the same apt command. I suggest to first install mysql and then tango:

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server

$ sudo apt-get install tango-common tango-db tango-starter tango-test python-pytango libtango7-doc omninotify

This also installs the necessary dependencies.

step 1, option without db:

The list of packages to install is the same but without the tango-db package:

$ sudo apt-get install tango-common tango-starter tango-test python-pytango libtango7-doc omninotify

step 2, starter is running in your system:

Check is there are running processes from the new user 'tango'. For example,

$ ps -ef |grep tango
Should show two process: the DataBaseds (the one who listen the port 10000) and the Starter (the one responsible to launch the device servers on start up in the correct sequence).

Also, another way to check that this works fine, is to try to "import PyTango" in a python interpreter.

I hope soon I will explain how to configure some devices to simulate things of a synchrotron machine. But before we will have to prepare and configure the tango core utilities.

Looking back, four years from now

2011-08-05T08:33:00.000+02:00

In last June, this blog have made 4 years, I'm really sad that is not walking the way I thought.

From the last two years I am not writing much about the main goals of this blog. Like the name says this has been think to post information about cryptology and about synchrotron related stuff (this partially more in general about the physics I'm learning due to my job, but also write about software engineering on my job). At least I have wrote this way in the second post. I remember when I wrote the first one.

But looking back, the fact is that the events in the job are not the best to focus on development. From the smallest to the biggest. From the macroeconomic to daily work. From the global crisis and the particular situation of Spain to the lasts incidents that happens at work.

What the hell!! Cannot be the things easier? Is not possible to live in peace? Dedicating the efforts in what makes work funy.

In Alba, the head of Experiments division "decided to stop activity": complicated way to say in an email that he will left Alba next September. In the "good bye" email, with the cold subject "information" (reflects a lot the behaviour of the workers at this institution) he have mention many times the word "reputation".

Next years will be crucial for this synchrotron reputation. I have a similar opinion, but a bit different perspective.

Yes, the Alba's reputation is made by many individual users who come to perform experiments. The effort of all the workers will make the users happy and they will comeback and tell they colleges about how good the work is done here.

And also there is motivation. Motivation of the workers to do our best. But since the last years this is becoming difficult. We succeed in linac start up in 2008, then comes the booster and after the storage, this year the beamlines commissioning. But there are "individuals" who have capacity to break this good environment. Specially the people how are upper in the hierarchy, they have more public skills. And they broke it.

By today, the company has been demanded in the trial for it's attitude against the workers unions. About the acts that some one in the management has made to threatening the workers. This action is not what brakes the environment, this is the consequence of an aggressive attitude subtended in time. A long time, years.

Don't believe them when they say: then the victim reports the assault is injuring the reputation of the institution. It's a very bad excuse and it criminalizes the victim to say that has been harm.

The directors of the cells consortium (and the LLS and the ST -4, another society in the Alba's area) have done many actions that disturbs the environment. Since I start to work here I have seen many situations of power abuse. Under the umbrella of this happens from time to time and you have to be aware and as far from him that you can work, the better. We have lost many good workers. There are examples of fired people, and many are people who left Alba as fast as possible to go to "better" places (meaning better by anywhere, but many to the ITER and its European corp). And all of them have a very good background and skills. They were very big losses. We suffer it.

The president of this institution has been kept inform of this events. He has been informed of the unpleasant situations with out acting to protect the workers. I think he is more interested in the reputation perspective from outside. If this news didn't go outside, to the public opinion, to the end-users, they are not important. Is not important if a worker is intimidated, the important thing is that no body else would know that.

I don't think as a good plan for reputation, when someone is attacked, try to silent the victim. This doesn't fix the problem, this would happen again, and it happens many times.

Having the people afraid to be vexed (or fired as a better situation) is not a way to make reputation on an institution. This is the way to have the people busy searching for a job somewhere else.

Autocollimator device server

2011-08-04T09:15:00.001+02:00

Recently I have write a little documentation for a device server to control an autocollimator. I'm specially glad for how this device is running and the integration with the Sardana system.

When the server is launched it tries to go to the live acquisition state. This means start receiving measures and showing them with in some attributes. This way you can have a gui where some attributes can be shown to see the current measures.

For example, you can say "I like to see the measures taken during 10 minutes". Then the device will continue collecting data and when it have this 10 minutes of samples it will cycle, having the same number of samples available from the last read.

But you may be interested in an usage of this laser to integrate data on time and collect it doing some steps. For example, if you have a surface to measure and you are scanning this surface with the laser to see how flat is this surface. For this you need synchronization between the movement and the acquisition.

That's why this device can go to a RUNNING state. In ON state is acquiring this live way.

The command start() will stop the live mode, clean the buffers (all of them intermediate and the one in the instrument), then it timestamps when the 'A' or 'R' is send to the instrument.

Then new data is collected during the time set in specific attributes for this purpose. At the end of the acquisition there will be launched a set of events to acknowledge the interface that this is done.

After this synchronous acquisition, the data will be available in this specific attributes and the live mode will continue (with clean buffers, remember).

Also I have test many error situations (hang intermediate device, unplug the instrument during some of the tasks of the devices, and so on), and it's reliable. Decays to fault state with an error message in the status to guide the user to set it up again.

Libreoffice on launchpad

2011-05-16T08:50:00.004+02:00

This last days I have installed the deb files for the Libreoffice, but I was thinking that over any update I was out of it.

I'm still running kubuntu 10.10 on my computers (but is planned and update to 11.04).

Easy I have search on the web for this words "libreoffice apt" and many publications are there. Probably is not necessary, certainly is redundant, but even that I like to share that the update to libreoffice is as simply as:


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice
sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

Gnome users must modify a bit the last line.

Ps: With more than a month of silence, at least one small post to go back to the activity...

Reaching 100mA in the storage ring

2011-04-02T18:40:00.004+02:00

Faster than the scheduled, yesterday 1st of April, we hit the milestone of the 100mA accumulated in the storage ring.

The 7th of March we receive the permission to start the commissioning of the storage ring (Monday, but was holidays in Barcelona). The 9th, we start and we did the first turn. It's not easy to reach this milestone that fast because many thing has been done blind and they was correct when too many parameters can fail.

Then we had stored beam the 13th and the 16th we start to accumulate beam in this ring.

During this last two weeks we was testing the subsystems that automatically kills the beam and it's better to do it with a low (but not too low) current. We did this test with about 40mA with success.

When the beam orbit goes close to the vacuum chamber, the beam positioning have to respond automatically to kill the beam that can break this chamber. If this brake happens the vacuum inside will be destroyed and this means months of problems.

With this tests pass, we can start increasing the more and more the current of this stored beam. From the evening of the 31th we start to increase this current. We've reach the 50mA, the 60mA, the 70mA, the 80mA, the 90mA... An at 18:25 of the 1st of April, we have reached the 100mA.

More important that this milestone itself, the great news is this was planed to be reach in June.

The work is not finish, but we are doing it faster than planed. Fine tuning is still pending, and this great speed on the milestones is not granting the next pending actions. But this give good feeling for that.

Update (20110408): This news has been published in the lightsources.org.

First light of Alba in the news

2011-03-22T17:31:00.005+01:00

I cannot find how to embed the video inside the post (put in a comment if you know how), but at least I have the link to the video in the most extended tv broadcast in Catalunya:

http://www.tv3.cat/3alacarta/#/videos/3434091

From the introduction they dedicate a lot of seconds, and inside the news review they have dedicated up to 2 minutes to the first synchrotron light in Alba (from 00:50 to 02:48).

Also they have explained another news about a work conflict (but not in the introduction) in a motorbikes factory, and they have dedicated to this: 1 minute (half of the time to the Alba's thing, from 03:27 to 04:30). If you look deep on to this news, how many red/black flags you can see?

First x-ray light in Alba

2011-03-18T12:56:00.006+01:00

We've working hard during this last years for this day, and it works at the firsts try!

After open the frontend shutter and moving the masks on this part, we just see current on the electrometers in side of the beamline Mistral. At the beginning it was an small current, in the order of the microamperes (uA). An in the first position where a ccd camera is placed we have seen this:

This image has been taken in the first moment I saw the beam and the minimum delay to take an snapshot. But After I have take better ones like:

There's an email to all Alba's stuff, from the experiments head, with this attachment:

In this email, he thanks all the colleagues involved to have this result (and I like to forward this email to the people who help for that but left before this event).

Also is explained that this is a footprint of a bending magnet light shaping it with the movable masks, and detailing that the marks on are 1mm separated.

This is the beginning of the next step!

visible synchrotron light

2011-03-18T09:31:00.006+01:00

Step by step, first turn on the 9th of March, beam stored the 13th and from the 16th of March we are accumulating more and more current on the storage ring beam. Yesterdaym, I have seen up to 20mA in the dcct. With this current, we can see visible light in the diagnostics beamline. Familiar name Xanadu, and technically bl34:

There is one diagnostics camera looking on this beam:

This days I have taken lots of snapshots of this "ctdiccd" application with beams from different places. For example Frontend34 with false colors:

Today, the plan is to do even more. We arrive early than expected to this step in the commissioning, and it's time for a shutter opening. The plan is open Mistral's frontend and start looking X-ray beam there. I hope I will have some nice photos of the beam.

increasing the current in the storage ring

2011-03-16T09:21:00.004+01:00

Another goal has been reach in this commissioning. Only 8 days after this tests start we have up to 4 mA average current in the beam of the storage ring. The transmission from the booster ring to the storage looks good with values close to the 100%.

Also the beam is stored in this ring for hours now, and it's time to start accumulating charge in this storage.

It looks possible that at the end of this week one frontend shutter would be open and start seeing synchrotron light in the first beamline.

update: Looking on the ccd acquisition, I'm counting up to 5 different clients looking images of the diagnostics beamline. The peak was this morning about 10 computers looking on the same camera (I cannot count the number of persons looking this computers).

Stored beam in the storage ring

2011-03-14T09:56:00.003+01:00

With a very redundant title I start this post with the announcement: this weekend Alba's storage ring has had a beam during one second. An small number of electrons (the current was 100uA, instead of the usuals 400mA that I saw in the screens of other synchrontrons).

Following the calculations of the last post and assuming the speed of the beam is 0.99998c in the storage ring of 268.8 meters:
0.99998c / 268.8 = 1115277 turns

There wasn't a announce email, but this weekend we had also beam for an hour in the storage ring. An hour has 3600s, then the beam has turned tu ring about 4 thousand million times. (I don't know yet the current of the beam in this case).

Storage ring first days of commissioning

2011-03-11T13:06:00.005+01:00

We reach the goal of the 100 turns and we are starting the RF system to have the beam live time bigger. But what is the meaning of this 100 turn in terms of beam time?

I have made a few numbers, at read it with care: I'm not a physicist.

The previous steps to arrive to the storage (what we already test and commissioning in the past) starts in the linac. A lineas accelerator of about 20 meters who generates beams of 100MeV. Using the transfer line, this beam is injected in the ring of the booster (249.6 meters) using pulsed magnets. This is a very precise task because this pulses have to kick the linac's beams and don't affect the ones that are already in the booster (other way we will kick them out).

In the booster, the beam is ramp from 100MeV to 3GeV. The booster's radio frequency is accelerating 30 times the beam. At that time, the beam is good to be transferred to the storage ring. This operation can be done in 160ms, when the machine is operating at 3Hz, because this is in the positive part of the wave. One turn is about 888ns, then the beam has take 180000 turns in the booster.

There is also a transfer line from the booster to the storage, with many diagnostics elements.

Being on the storage ring (268.8 meters) the first turn photo has been publish in the Alba's web:

The transferlines are about 18 meters the ltb (linac to booster), and 26 meters the bts (booster to storage):
linac(20)+ltb(18)+(booster(249.6)*18e4 turns)+bts(26)+(storage(268.8)*1 turn)
This is about 45000Km from the linac's shot to the beam photo up here. This beam is hitting an screen of a few millimeters. During this trip the beam is stored in an orbit, being corrected, focused, and so on.

Now is time to store this beam in this orbit of 268.8 meters for many hours.

Storage ring first turn

2011-03-10T09:08:00.003+01:00

This morning, just when I check the email I saw one from Dieter (accelerator's boss) announcing that yesterday evening we reach the goal of the first turn of the storage ring (and some more without radio frequency)

Why this goal is important? Afaik, this means that the path is free from the linac to the storage, and everywhere where the electron's beam has to live is well aligned, the magnets works and the orbit can be reached, and so on. In less words: the subsystems works together correctly. Until this week, we test everything as close as possible to the final way. But until the moment when you put everything together and you switch on it, you have a fussy area of afraidness.

Also I like to thanks Dieter, because is usual on him to do a thanks list when a goal is reach and a little email with some pictures and explanation (there are others not that polite and retailer). And in this complex machine, the goals can only be reach with a collective work.

Update: Today we hit the goal of 100 turns

Alba: Storage ring commissioning

2011-03-08T11:38:00.007+01:00

It has been announced that yesterday arrives a fax to Alba's faciliries with the permission to start the storage ring commissioning. After a callback confirmation, and a couple of months waiting for this permission, including some shifts cancellations, the day has been arrived.

Following the plan, this afternoon we will start to operate the accelerators complex: starting from the very tested linac (from 2008, electron accelerator to 100Mev), followed by the booster ring (2009-2010, from 100MeV to 3GeV), and we will use again the BTS (Booster To Storage transferline) in order to inject and do the first turns in the storage ring accelerator (maintain at 3GeV and produce good synchrotron light).

Tango Control System in Ubuntu

2011-03-04T11:27:00.010+01:00

Update: There's a newer version of this howto here.

A long a go, in the tango control system mail list, we have announced the availability of debian packages for Tango and the inclusion of them in the ubuntu's repositories. The installation of this distributed control system becomes really easy, and you will have the updates from the this community.

As easy like:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:abogani/tango
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys F141B61E

Edit the sources file if you are not in the Long Term Support (LTS) ubuntu version, with something like:
sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/abogani-tango-maverick.list
change, for example, maverick to lucid.

sudo apt-get update

Then you have two possibilities: with or without the tango database. The second case assumes that you have another server installed with it in the network.

1st case: install a tango with a database
sudo apt-get install tango-common tango-db tango-starter tango-test python-pytango libtango7-doc omninotify

Also "dbconfig-common libboost-python1.40.0 libcos4-1 liblog4tango4 libomniorb4-1 libomnithread3c2 libtango7" dependencies will be installed.

2nd case: you already have a tango database in another server:
If you already have another system in the network with tango installed, you don't need the database packages, then the installation to do is:
sudo apt-get install tango-common tango-starter tango-test python-pytango libtango7-doc omninotify

Also "libboost-python1.40.0 libcos4-1 liblog4tango4 libomniorb4-1 libomnithread3c2 libtango7" dependencies will be installed.

Well, after this steps, you must have the tango control system running on your machine and with it you have included the python binding.

Absurdities of who to (poorly) spend (public) money

2011-02-17T09:39:00.007+01:00

This morning, in the radio, I have listened a news about the ryanair company is asking for better subsides to work in the Lleida's airport (and for sure the other company on this airport vueling would be asking for it). A few days a go the news was from pyrenair how abort the operations from this airport due to the poor results (3 weeks if I remember correctly).

Note: I didn't know that this pyrenair company was operating from this airport until they cancel the operation. The biggest "ad" was when they cancel the flies...

In this crisis we are making a thing that I see as a mistake: many companies are receiving subsides to continue their business. From this fly companies to the car manufacturers. The issue that I can see is this is not fixing the problem. Instead of make easy the people to be in the capitalist system (do trips, or change your car in this examples) the public money is used to things like build cars and store them. We still have people working on this car manufacturing, when the same people has not enough salaries to get this cars. Stock issue is comming...

After the first two days of the storage commissining

2011-02-14T09:21:00.005+01:00

As Ollupac ask for, some (unofficial) information will be written about who was the thing this weekend.

As usual, there is absolutely nothing in the Alba's website. I miss a lot public information about the progress, in the same order that I miss the web site in Catalan and Spanish.

Even that, this weekend we have not been able to do the first turn of the storage ring. What has been done, in deed, in the commissioning of the bt-extraction and the sr-injection: the transfeline from the booster to the storage.

We may be too optimistic in who difficult can be this process of extraction and injection can be. Realize that the beam has been accelerated in one circumference (we say that it has an orbit) and it is displaced to bigger one with a very precise operation in a small tube.

We didn't get the first turn in the storage ring (we only pass up to two bending, about one sector). But this was the first time we put this up an running. As soon as we receive another temporal permission or the definitive one, we will try again.

Think first vs. Extreme programming

2011-02-12T17:21:00.005+01:00

During many years I had the feeling that I programme too slow. Yes, I thought I have this disadvantage against some other programmers I know. I devote the people who is writing a solution when I am still reading the problem.

But during this lasts weeks of more calm development, I realize that I was not taking into account another factor on this equation: bug fixes.

Almost all the written code would requires some maintenance. In my case, I have realized that the faster, the often. I mean, often the things that I wrote too fast I had to review and fix. Or even worst, a hard refactorization when the time goes in a secondary term.

I understand that in some moment a hackish can be a necessary tool, but does someone measure this as a cost? In many consultant companies where I have work, they measure how fast you write and almost never how good you think.

I will always remember the day that I have received a warning from the project leader to explain why my code has less lines that yesterday: "Easy, I found a way to optimize main method of the scheduler task" (ingénu). The thing goes worst when he orders me to undo this optimization. The final solution was to have two methods and the compiler forgets the old/long because is not called.

After this personal battle that I hope is not bothering you too much, I go back to the origin of this post. There are programmers who are better codifiers under extreme programming environment, others (I think my case) codes better under circumstances that allows to think in the solution before.

Probably is a thing to measure in an abstract way and do some statistics, but how is the bug-pattern? The thinkers can try extreme programming, but can be satisfactory the other way around? How the codes evolve in terms of bugs and patch releases?

Finally, I think programming is a team activity (or the project is small enough) and a good boss, more than recruit the best ones, must recruit a good balance of extreme programmers and thinkers. Thinkers some times can decay in "never release" because some improvement can be added.

Or perhaps I am confuse and wrong in what I am saying...

Happy Alba this weekend

2011-02-11T16:47:00.007+01:00

Finally one of the milestones arrives! This weekend we will (try to) have beam in the storage ring.

Don't misunderstand the "try" in parenthesis, everything is prepared and tested. All the subsystems has been check and recheck preparing the day that we have permission to inject in the second ring, but they never work together like they will do this weekend (other ways this test have already been).

I didn't wrote here when we had the booster commissioning (I had this blog a little abandoned at that time) but yes for the linac's commissioning and first beam.

Looking on the wikipedia's image, the storage ring is the one with the red boxes. the booster is represented with the smaller internal circle and the linac is the straight line in the middle.

Our synchrotron is a bit different because the booster and the storage rings shares the same tunnel. But this doesn't matter in terms of operation (only in terms of installation: a ring cannot be tested when the other is under installation).

There will not be radio frequency in the storage ring (as a first test it is), and this means that after the acceleration of the beam in the booster (from 100MeV given by the linac to the 3GeV of the booster), the beam will have a very short live time. The goal for this weekend is one turn, but 4 sectors will also be great (but more than a turn will be the best). Probably many re-injections will be performed and perhaps some synchrotron light will be seen in the ccds with I'm in charge in the machine diagnostics control.

I like to see this goal accomplished and I have confidence on that. We already demonstrate it in the booster commissioning when the master goal was 600 MeV of acceleration and we reach 2.7GeV a few day before the end of the commissioning.

Many Spanish people tries to go work to Disney Land Paris

2011-02-11T16:02:00.005+01:00

A few days a go, in the news, they explain that Germany is offering jobs to Spanish engineers, and many people is trying to find a job there. A job is a job and I will no discuss about go or not to another country to work (even if I think this is not a bad option).

The reason of this post is due to the announcement in the news the queue of people trying to apply for a job in Disney Land Paris. This is not new, because almost every year this park is offering this temporal jobs. The new thing is that in Spanish news they remark the salary. Spanish people seems to be really happy to go Paris for this salary, also when the IMF, with in the austerity measures says that the Spanish salaries are to high and must be reduced (starting with the public employees).

The incompressible thing is that this succulent offer to work in France per 1378€ (gross per month) is near to the minimum salary in this country (1343.77€ in 2010). When in Spain this number is 633.30€ (smaller than in Ireland (1100€), but bigger than Greece (563€)).

Elliptic curves in the master branch of GnuPG

2011-02-07T20:48:00.003+01:00

A few days a go, a branch for elliptic curves support un GnuPG has been announced, and I wrote here 4 words about this goal.

This month the branches has been merged to the master. First in the libgcrypt, and the next day to gnupg, and the mail thread is long with some "congrats" words. Is a really good thing to have this implementation available for the general usage.

By now, this keys are only available for "--expert" usage, and it must be like that. This is one of the steps to have them accessible for all of us and have this type of keys and algorithms used in the day by day. A cryptographic development has to follow a process of audit before an official release, and even that I should be audit forever.

This is not a lack of confidence with the developer (perhaps a bit, no worries, it's only crypto-paranoia) but the trust in the algorithms and the implementations below the secrets we put in must require a level of revision. Is not the same problem, if a program fails and some system is not accessible for a couple of hours, than if your private mail communication (ciphered) becomes compromised and some who you don't like can read them.

General strike 27G

2011-01-27T10:43:00.011+01:00

Usually I don't write this type of things in this blog, but today I'll do an exception (Like I did when we had protests in the synchrotron). In the future we will see if this is only an exception (looking on the "politics" tag). I hope I am no digging my grave.

Today is general strike in some regions of Spain (Euskadi, Nafarroa, Galiza, Balearic islands, and Catalunya) organized by some syndicalist organizations. In the case of Catalonia: CGT Catalunya, CNT Catalunya, COS and Solidaridad Obrera. I have to say: they are not the majority in workers union organizations in Catalunya.

The announcement of this strike has been silenced by the mass media. Yes, I say that because in the "main" tv news and the paper press, I saw almost anything about this strike. As an example, in the Catalonian tv, in the news I saw last Saturday (non web accessible) they told about an okupation (squat) in an abandoned cinema building. They explain that the police had to remove them due to some similitude with the squat of a building, a few days before the general strike of the 29th of September (2010), without telling "there's an strike planned for the 27th" until the last second of the report.

Today the video they have public is more impartial they explain the thing more in a fifty fifty way. But this was not what the people saw at the first moment that this happen. Also they publish another video about the Catalonian (new) government announcing a zero tolerance in the squatting. Even of the big problem we had in this country last months the government did not say anything about zero tolerance in politics corruption, police, or companies. A citizen can go more days to jail for being in a protest than for million euros corruption.

What the government announce yesterday is the derogation of an internal police rule about ethics. The reason: we can trust in our police. Then we can remove all the laws, because we can trust in our citizens. People is ideal! People is great from nature. I don't thing it's easy to be a cop, but without rules for them weird things happen. Why to remember all the press to dress the distinguish with a bracelet? Do I have to dress another bracelet telling the police that I am a good citizen?

The Spanish mass media are talking about Egyptian, Tunisian and Yemen protests. In local news they don't talk about any type of protest, only they explain the agreement about the prolongation of the age of retirement, even if this is the reason of the general strike of today, they don't talk about strike. In Europe we even don't have media information about Iceland revolution.

We cannot discuss the official speech. If you are not agree about what the capitalism and neoliberalism, the only option they give you is to be excluded of the system, to be against the system. With what is happening on this crisis, the best thing they can tell about the people is that the are anti-capitalist.

Kona's Gallaxy

2011-01-22T10:24:00.003+01:00

This week, I shared with some friends the Astronomy Picture of the Day (there's a very nice Spanish translation). I like to share a bit more this picture.

Look the people at the other side of the galaxy, they are small from this perspective. Realize also: there is a bench close to the galaxy center! Assuming that this bench can be 2 meters long, who big this garden can be?

They have a few more pictures in the site of the garden, but the link with I enjoy much more is from the Spanish translation to a zoomed atlas of visible universe from the Earth.

What's next for the Fermilab?

2011-01-14T17:49:00.003+01:00

One of the Fermilab's projects arrives knows when will be its last day: the Tevatron. This is the second biggest collider that the human beings build, and has been the the first one during many years before the start up of the LHC.

The machine was completed in 1983 being a collider of two beams of 512GeV, resulting collisions of about 1TeV (this is the reason of its name). An upgrade (I think in 1994, but I'm not completely sure) allows to have both beams close to 1TeV (meaning that the collisions are about 2Tev).

Many data has been collected with this machine and specially its bigger detectors: CDF and DØ. But meny more experiments are running in the Fermilab.

This news about close this project can be feel only like a budget cut, but I hope this is like the day that the LEP was closed. I hope this will mean a push on the ILC project.

Elliptic curves with a git repository

2011-01-12T08:39:00.006+01:00

Good news, finally someone found time to do what has to be done asap, with the development of elliptic curves in the field of the free software.

Also the repository of the GnuPG has been successfully migrated to git (human readable in wikipedia), great. (good and short howto)

I have not enough time for the full development of the ecdh development and I feel really glad that some one founds it. Now is time for help in test.

Great job Andrey!

To work with the git sources, 5 projects must be cloned:

$ git clone git://git.gnupg.org/libgpg-error.git

$ git clone git://git.gnupg.org/libksba.git

$ git clone git://git.gnupg.org/libassuan.git

$ git clone git://git.gnupg.org/libgcrypt.git

$ git clone git://git.gnupg.org/gnupg.git

Then go the the branches for the elliptic curves:

$ pushd libgcrypt

$ git checkout ECC-INTEGRATION-1-5

$ popd

$ pushd gnupg

$ git checkout ECC-INTEGRATION-2-1

$ popd

Now you have the sources of the GnuPG with elliptic curves support.

Update:

$ libgcrypt-config --version

1.6.0-git8993868

$ libgcrypt-config --algorithms

Symmetric cipher algorithms: arcfour blowfish cast5 des aes twofish serpent rfc2268 seed camellia

Public-key cipher algorithms: dsa elgamal rsa ecc

Message digest algorithms: crc md4 md5 rmd160 sha1 sha256 sha512 tiger whirlpool

$ gpg2 --version

gpg (GnuPG) ecc 2.2.0-git5761a9b

libgcrypt 1.6.0-git8993868

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Home: ~/.gnupg

Supported algorithms:

Pubkey: RSA, ELG, DSA, ECDH, ECDSA

Cipher: 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH, CAMELLIA128,

CAMELLIA192, CAMELLIA256

Hash: MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, SHA224

Compression: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB

FERMI@Elettra: First coherent emission

2010-12-22T12:01:00.002+01:00

Last year we put beam in the booster ring (at December 21th, from the linac transfer line to a few meters in the booster) and this year we cannot do the injection to the storage ring due to reasons that are only rumours listened in the corridors of Alba.

But the good news arrives from Elettra, and one of their on going projects: the Fermi. Also they have a third generation light source, but they are doing a fourth generation one: a FEL. Last Monday they get the goal like we did with the booster, but with next generation machine (and all of this next generation are under construction).

scopes device server improve (III)

2010-12-20T15:15:00.014+01:00

Again, new commit (r2509) to the tango-ds svn. This have some improvement more, trying to alow the user to do what they want, but with some reliability about it.

The initial design when many attributes (read_attributes([]))was requested at the same time, they was Ask() to the lower level device PyVisa, one by one. And this means one query per attribute:

On the last improvement, the device does one query to the instrument when many things are requested at the same time:

But with this, the issue is when you use a small scope (and I mean small, one with a small embedded system inside) some types of measurements block the instrument. When this multiple request is too big for this scope, a time out occurs. But for a bigger scope this can be not a problem, or the problem in a different number of multiple requests.

What has been committed today add a new attribute ('QueryWindow') to the device class to group this multiple query in smaller requests. Then configuring it, this allows to query one by one, in a really small scope; or all at the same time if the scope can support it. The image of the design can be:

Also another attribute has been introduced ('TimeStampsThreshold'). Even if the requests are grouped or not, if the client starts with many requests of the same value too often, the problem is shown again. Only requesting one attribute, but 10 times per second, depending on the scope can be an issue or not.

The solution I propose is cache values, with an attribute saying expiration time of the value. This means, when the client likes to read a value that has been never before read, this will be included in the list of attribute to read. When the answer is back, the data is saved with the time stamp of when it was read.

Some time in the future, the client can ask again for this value. This could happen 100ms after the first read, or 10minutes. The device will check the time stamps of the last read, and if it is too old, this will be read like in the case before. But if this is too short, the answer will be the previous value, and the tango attribute will have the time stamp of when this was read. This last part is really important to avoid confusion to the user: if the value is from the past, the user should be able the realize that. Also if more than one client request values to the device, this doesn't increase the number of hardware reads if they are asking the same thing.

I hope with this changes, the usage of this device class will be better. We will see if something has to be change, and I'm open to other ways to solve this.

Update (2010/12/21): commit 2510

When a measurement is not possible, incomplete or stopped, the result is 9.99999e+37. Before this triggers an exception, but is better to returns NaN.
Fix the dictionary set for the cache on the start up
Add a filter for the spectrums attributes
After a time out the PyVisa goes back to its default value, check it before ask to it.

Update (2010/12/22): commit 2511

Bug fix in the group method. It cuts the last elements if they wasn't in the same length of the cut. ex: group([1,2,3,4],3) was excluding the last incomplete element, now it is returning [(1, 2, 3), (4,)].
Reduce the filters to one iteration instead of one per filter.

Wikileaks pursuit

2010-12-15T17:46:00.002+01:00

There is a lot of information about the wikileaks pursuit on the web. Just I read this funny comic.

Don't kill the messenger. After Wikileaks revelations, it seems that the problem is when secret information is shown. The problem is that the citizens are able to have proves of what we suspect: too many times our democratic representatives lie us. This informations, with many more revelations, are the final proof that they lie on purpose!

air traffic controllers

2010-12-09T18:14:00.011+01:00

After some days with much information about the air traffic controllers in Spain, I start to google a little bit more about this thing.

The first thing I miss in the tv and newspapers is the "explanation" of this workers. Many times I can see in the tv images of passengers in the airports with problems to fly, or angry people screaming about this, and the government explanations of what they did. But where is the voice of the militarized workers because of a declared "state of Alarm" of the country? On the internet is the place, I don't know why this is not also said in the news.

There is another page with information from this group. The mass media are saying very different things about them. The explanations on the press says that this air traffic controllers lives in a paradise and they have unconfesable privileges. I have listened in many tv news that their salary is 4 times bigger to the Spanish government president, in average 350k€/year. But seems that they are answering that this is very far from real because it's between 50k€ and 120k€. But I didn't listened that in the news.

Neither I have listened about the number of hours they work per year. And important, what means the work our or what counts as a work ours. In my job, I do in my journey what I have to do, if the company want's me after this time, is on my decision. They explain this is not like that.

Also I like to point about the information that they are blocking the contract of new workers. I don't understand this point. I never saw in a company that the workers representation have voice in the interviews (much less to have vote in the contract process). This link also explains something about that.

If you are ill? As the media says, a big number of them was ill at the same time last Friday. But the air traffic controllers explains that if they are ill they have to work this our in another moment. Do you have this condition in your job? If you have a flu or you broke your leg, do you have to compensate next months for the time that you are offline?

Finally I don't understand why the journalist are not telling this. At least to contrast the information. And also this problem with the air traffic controllers is not new from this year. Even if the AENA's benefits or losses are not from this year, why this government likes to fix it just now? Aren't there any other urgent things in this country to fix? Or is because the privatization of this AENA company. Do we only make a public company work before sell it? I think is better to do always and then the benefits can be from the beginning...

Other information about this, can be followed using the alternative press medias, like:

Abajo el Estado de alarma. Solidaridad con los controladores

El Soylent Green es gente

Militarizar los mercados

scopes device server improve (II)

2010-12-09T17:52:00.006+01:00

New commit to the repositori of tango device servers for the PyVisaInstrumentWrapper, in particular for the scopes class. This improvement will be also propagated to the other classes, but first I like to understand some behaviour.

Stressing an instrument with this code, I realize that something depends on the instrument capabilities. In one model of the scopes I test it (the expensive one) it works correctly. With something like:

import PyTango

scope = PyTango.DeviceProxy(scope_name)

attributes = scope.read_attributes(scope.get_attributes_list())

That means "ask everything to the scope" there is one request per channel (the plot data) and one request for all the other scalar values. The response is very much faster than before.

The issue is when I try it with another simpler scope (a cheaper one). I receive a timeout because of the reading. This make the device to decay to fault state, and the reconnection procedure relives it to on state.

Looking on the screen of the scope the messages, after the timeout, are: "Undefined Header" and later on "Query Interrupted". But with less attributes concurrent to read (about 10) it works. A probable solution is subdivide the queries, but how to know the number of possible attributes to be read once?

scopes device server improve (I)

2010-12-07T09:57:00.011+01:00

There is a tango device server for remote control of oscilloscopes and similar instruments. This has been written a long a go (first commit in may 2009) and extended a few times adding other types of instruments (last commit is from august this year, 2010). Now this server has not only the "scope" class, also includes "RealTimeSpectrum" analyser, arbitrary "FunctionGenerator", and "RfSignalGenerator".

But now the issue is in the attributes readout. I general, for all this classes, when you ask many things this is asking to the low level "Visa" device and transmitted to the hardware. Even if you ask many things at the same time (this often happens with the oscilloscopes) each is ask separately.

First improvement: multiple readings.

Apart from the read_attribute() method of the device API, there is a read_attributes([]). Doing a call to the first option, the flow calls previous methods like always_executed_hook() and read_attr_hardware(). This last one, have a list of the attributes who can do a pre-read action. With the current release, the multiple attribute read, is not optimum.

The real read is when the internal methods read_XXX() (where XXX means the name of the attribute) is called. This is, when the multiple-reading is executed, the device acts in the same way than do a simple-reading n times.

The visa protocol, allows the possibility to concatenate queries to the hardware below. With this read_attr_hardware() we can centralize in the code the common way to read and optimize it.

The input parameter of the read_attr_hardware() is a list of integers. With the MultipleAttribute class I would have the attribute objects to know to who the read action is requested.

Time to code and test it.

Machine start up

2010-12-07T09:47:00.005+01:00

How many times we should wrote this subject to a post? This project of a blog has been a bit abandoned due to a time with a hard work, where fast was one of the goals.

I hope, now, with the project delayed for reasons not related with the workers and the work we do, I'll find time to write a little bit about software design, cryptology and this things that I prefer that fight a despot management.

The start up is delayed, but every thing is prepared, there is no official explanation for it.

ALBA synchrotron back to normal

2010-07-22T17:59:00.002+02:00

This Monday, the workers assembly gives the ok to a negotiated salary cut according to the decree law that affects the public sector in Spain. This negotiated solution is progressive and minimizes the impact of the cuts to the lower salaries.

I hope, the management finally realizes that the good behaviour with the workers is the best way to have a synchrotron working. All of us have the same objective: to have a synchrotron facility online!

Strike and protest actions at ALBA synchrotron

2010-06-30T09:59:00.004+02:00

After a long time without write here I like to reactivate it, but not for good news. After a long time trying to focus and speed up the synchrotron project, we had a "Drop of water that spills the glass".

https://sites.google.com/site/comitedempresacells/

This is not because of the salary cut, this is because of the management of the synchrotron how doesn't like to negotiate the progression of this cut. They said a "proposal" or a 5% cut equal for all. They said, my proposal or my (worst) second proposal, without accept any type of negotiation.

The issue is not the cut, the issue is the attitude of the management against the workers.

Decentralized mirror multiple repositories

2008-11-25T10:00:00.004+01:00

From a long a go I am try to find how to synchronize the contents of, at least two, code repositories. After some tries with software not design to do it, I was illuminated to one correct.

But after know the program who is able to do it, the other point is to know how to say to the program what you want to do. Now I know a little and I write an small howto for one of the usages I want.

One reason for this tool is when I have two repositories where I like to save the sources or when you like to develop for somewhere you only have read access.

In the second case, when you are developing something for a free software project who have a public repository, this repository is only read access for you. Then you should have your repository somewhere else. But a feature to synchronize with the updates on the main branch are need. It's like to have a branch in a different place and you like to have a merge possibility.

The other case is when we have an internal repository, a working copy, and at some point of the development you want to publish something in a public repository.

Many more things can be done with svk, I will check and if I can I will document it.

Dynamic multiple inheritance (II)

2008-11-13T15:41:00.004+01:00

It works. We are using multiple inheritance and also we change dynamically on one macro, one of its inheritance to adapt to the concrete measurement.

More understandable code that A and B classes should be:

class _ltb:
····def __init__(self):
········print "__init__ 4 __ltb"
····def mesh(self):
········print "do a mesh scan"

class _energy(_ltb):
····def showResults(self):
········print "Energy results"

class _emittance(_ltb):
····def showResults(self):
········print "Emittance results"

class ltb_energy(_energy):
····def run(self):
········self.mesh()
········self.showResults()

class ltb_emittance(_emittance):
····def run(self):
········self.mesh()
········self.showResults()

class ltb_offline:
····def run(self,operation):
········if operation == "energy":
············self.__class__.__bases__ = (_energy,)
········elif operation == "emittance":
············self.__class__.__bases__ = (_emittance,)
········self.mesh()
········self.showResults()

In the implementation, there is also multi-inheritance because the ltb_{energy,emittance,offline} also inherit from Macro (a class of the MacroServer).

The sources of the Sardana project are in sourceforge. This macros are not already uploaded to the tango-ds svn. It needs a little bit more test, and probabli next week we will publish it.

Nota: in the implementation, the classes ltb_{energy,emittance,offline} has another primary inheritance from Macro. But the classes _energy and _emittance cannot inherite from Macro, because are not macros itself, but uses method of this superclass.

Dynamic multiple inheritance

2008-11-13T11:13:00.011+01:00

I am having a little problem with the offline measurement on the linac. My task in the linac is to produce an application to measure the electron beam energy and emittance. A long a go, we start to document it on the Alba's site.

The idea of the offline measurement was on means of all, but not so clear because we did some offline with data from other synchrotrons. But now we like to repeat the measurements we already did with our linac. Always when a measurement had been launch we store the images. Then the offline is to reload the images and deceive the system like this is real.

Problems about we didn't take care before are, for example, the magnets doesn't move precisselly to the ordered position; there is a threshold on that. And when the fit will be repeated offline we have to use the old magnet values, not the dummy motors how we use to simulate that.

Then something specific has to be programed to do this. We had macros to do the online measurements and they are not usable to load data from an old session for the offline measurement. Ok, then we need a new macro:

But, the offline macro needs to be the same to simulate energy or emittance. Then the inheritance, apart to be multiple, has to be dynamically changed...

Why not an instance? Why not all the macros only inherit from 'Macro' and has an instance of __energy or __emittance? Because the three on top right uses methods from the 'Macro' class.

class A:
def method(self):
print "A"
def methodA(self):
print "AA"

class B:
def method(self):
print "B"
def methodB(self):
print "BB"

class C:
def setA(self):
self.__class__.__bases__ = (A,)
def setB(self):
self.__class__.__bases__ = (B,)
def setAB(self):
self.__class__.__bases__ = (A,B)
def setBA(self):
self.__class__.__bases__ = (B,A)

Ok, then what can be done is:
c = C()

c has 4 methods: {c.setA(),c.setB(),c.setAB(),c.setBA}

c.setA()
now has 2 methods more {c.setA(),c.setB(),c.setAB(),c.setBA,c.method(),c.methodA()}

with a call c.setB() the list of methods changes to {c.setA(),c.setB(),c.setAB(),c.setBA,c.method(),c.methodB()}

c.setAB()
now the list of methods is
{c.setA(),c.setB(),c.setAB(),c.setBA,c.method(),c.methodA(),c.methodB()}
and notice the call c.method() uses the one from A.

with c.setBA()
the list is the same, but now the c.method() uses the one from B.

Actualization: Be careful if you use multiple objects using this. If we have multiple instances, the modification affects all of them:
c1 = C()
c2 = C()
c1.setA()
c1.method()
A
c2.setB()
c2.method()
B
c1.method()
B

OpenMoko is moving

2008-11-12T09:23:00.002+01:00

Finally I see some movement on Openmoko to say that is trying. I don't have the device but I have it running in qemu as I wrote a long ago.

Some (sub)communities starts movements creating contents with more proximity to the potential clients. Many of us are convinced to support Openmoko because we support free software on our bones, but the world is full of people who doesn't care about that and other techniques are need.

For example this case of an spanish community who are writing a wiki from a non technical point of view, more in a propagandistic way to be proximus to the final user.

Thanks the communities and feel free!

Extremophile

2008-09-19T09:58:00.003+02:00

After the land of the Phoenix in the Mars arctic, with the first results of the high salinity of the ground, I read some articles about the water is not the only one restriction to allow life.

In out planet we have places where the life exist under extreme conditions. This type of life we call it Extremophile. Working in a synchrotron I am curioused, specifically with the life that is able to be in extreme radiological conditions. I don't know how a bacteria can protect and repair what the radiation breaks, but what about the parasitoid wasp? Wikipedia says this complex life can support a hundred times more of radiation than the humans.

A few a go I read about the survivance in space conditions of the Tardigrade. It's impressive how this lifes can survive to the void with high radiation doses.

how (software) patents can bother your development

2008-09-13T12:03:00.004+02:00

Yesterday, I receive an answer from Jivson (the author of the 'ECC in OpenPGP' internet draft) from a couple of mails discussing something about how to play with the standard to made easy some future improvements.

I'm working in an improvement of the eccGnuPG project to add the feature to reset the cryptosystem using isogeny stars like Er Rostovtsev, Anton Stolbunov propouse.

To create this isogeny stars can be usefull that they have a cofactor 2 (or at most 4, like the standards recomend) in order to have easier ways to compute a path in the stars. My surprice arribes when Jivson draws me the attention on the point that cofactor division is under a patent.

I trust on it, but I cannot find this yet. Maybe this idea with I'm working now, will be patented by someone else some day. And I can be obligated again to drop some work because an stupid patent. This is the third time that patents bother my work on elliptic curves.

This is incredible, simply unacceptable.

Milky Way center candidate

2008-09-12T11:06:00.002+02:00

Continuing with the reading of Nature's last week (September, 4th), in a letter about candidate of our galaxy center I'm thinking about how hard can be to deduce who is the center of the galaxy.

Looking on another galaxy, with a good perspective on it, can be possible to approach to know around which structure the galaxy turns around. But when we are looking from in side this can be not so easy. As an example, the center of a galaxy is so briliant, but in a clear night from the Earth the center of the Milky way is not visible. We need to study it in the infrared spectrum, for example, because of the objects that are in the middle who block the visible light.

When we look to the center of the galaxy we are looking to the past because it's far from here, and the light expends 24k8 light years, to travel the 7k6 parsecs. Looking Andromeda we have a prespective that shows us objects from a similar time, but from inside our galaxy the light of diferent objects arribes here from different historyc moments.

By the way, our candidate as a center is Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole that can have 4 million solar masses, with in an space that can be 45 AU. (realize that all the planets in our solar system are closer to the sun than this distance).

recicling photographed conference slides

2008-09-11T12:15:00.006+02:00

I'm reading in the Nature of last week (September, 4th) about the nervousness of some scientist with the colleges that goes to a conference and takes photos with digital cameras and uses the data for their own publications.

I cannot definitely understand this position. The first ones, the lecturers are presenting some data in public and they can have the title of the first of publish it. At the same time this can be used as a base of the next publication upgrade, or to find any mistake that exists.

In this second possibility, imagine that in this PAMELA presentation they announce the dark matter detection (implies existence) with a mistaken proves that no one in the conference can study because of their obscurity. I'm not saying they should did mistakes, I'm saying not other scientist can check it. Yes, they like to review with some other colleges chosen by themselves, but this doesn't mean publish.

If they don't trust a 100% to their study why they publish it? Because no one else publish it before but saving the dress if they made a mistake? Oh, please! This have more sense in politics, or some where than the only important think is naming. There is no price for the second who discover dark matter, I understand it. But what happens if another scientist team is closer to the verified results and publish it; will this ones says 'they copy it from us' with an ultra-hidden camera in the conference?

Actualization: Reading more about this column in Nature, I understand the problem is more because the copyright of many publications than specifically because the scientist doesn't like it. Many times the slides are published after the conference, but the problem can come when the journals decides which data can be publish out them. How is the owner of the investigations?

New expired patent

2008-09-03T15:33:00.002+02:00

A few days before the ephemeris of the expiration of the RSA patent an obsolete new one arribes from Microsoft. Remember in September 20th 2000 expires a patent from the 1983 (about an algorithm invented in 1977) how license exclusivelly the rsa company to explode the use of:

c = m^e (mod n)

Patent it's suposed to mean a technological advance that the company developer needs to has an exclusive to explodes in term of refund the inversion. But if you (and me) think what can be a discover when the algorithm date from 6 years before, we will not understand about the new microsoft patent...

How can be, now a day, patented the ``Page Up'' and ``Page Down''? Read in many places about this question (spanish, english). For how long this keys are in the keyboards doing the task recently patented?

Back to linac's commissioning

2008-08-25T15:47:00.006+02:00

After this month that doesn't exist from the working point of view (not purely my case) we are back to do the linac's commissioning. Some projects are working fine to be used in the real world: the 'Fluorescence Screen Gui' and the 'Energy & Emittance Measurement'. I like to show the last layer view of this work here.

First of all the fsotr:
This is an snapshot of a (non-electron) beam take during this August. This is a light reflection that seems like a beam and the ImgBeamAnalyzer doesn't know about differences.

The pneumatic valve position can be selected in the top right off the screen and the values of the camera exposition are next to this. And the image is show on the left with the profiles and, if its the case the fit of this profile. Then all the data from this picture processed.

An important change from the last version. This analyzer was working doing polling of the camera, and every fixed time it ask for a new one and process it. Now this device is subscribed to the camera, and is this camera (using Tango way) who advice the analyzer because a new image is able.

Next project is the E&E measurement:
With this what is want is to measure the beam energy and then the emittance of the beam. In fact this is an scan of a magnet. For example, to know the energy of a beam the bending magnet can be used to know how hard is the beam to be bended: more energetic means more current to the magnet to bend it.

This projects will be used tomorrow in the linac's commissioning restart. Almost all the requirement are done, only rest the last ones that was asked for. Final tuning.

Neutrinos, from to be detect to use to detect

2008-08-25T09:38:00.003+02:00

The neutrino was theorized in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli and detected form the first time in 1956. During this long time since now this particle have some veil of uncertainty because of its really small mass, it was not much affected by big masses. Also this particle doesn't interact much with the rest of the matter then is able to pass along out planet without contact. Also because of its small mass this particles travels at speeds close to the light.

Really big structures has need to detect this avoids particle. In order to find some of this not much interactions a huge detector is required Super-Kamiokande. A huge pool of water, in a dark place down to the Earth surface, with a large number of photo amplifiers who multiplies any small interaction.

This can change if a core planet study project go ahead. Right now we are using seismic waves to study the structure of this big mass where we live (relatively big, do not compare it with Jupiter, neither the sun, and in any case with Antares). The seismic waves interact with all the matter in the middle to the core (it means noise), but neutrinos has the other extreme characteristic they will interact a little with the core, but more that the rest of the panetary matter.

Do not forget that the elementary material of the ringworld absolves the 40% of the neutrinos...

Interstellar trips only for science-fiction

2008-08-21T15:28:00.003+02:00

A few days a go I was reading about warp speed and how travel fast than the light can be understand that it is under contradiction with relativity.

Science-fiction uses objects that the physics theories says as possible according with other theories that are also unverified. But is nice when you read scifi books or swatch tv shows how interstellar trips can be possible or also intergalactic. But my pleasure in a well when I read the humans, perhaps, never travel far from the solar system. The tech advances can be at a light years distance...

But also we can handle the hope that we are talking from an age like the Ancient Greek says there is no possible to jump higher to the sky...

Discerning the supersymmetric dark matter?

2008-08-18T15:05:00.003+02:00

A few weeks a go, I was reading about a curious marker from the center of out galaxy. I couldn't find the link to an article explaining a peak of gamma photons in the 511 KeV. I read that this value have some relation with the annihilation of the antimatter, specifically when a positron finds and electron and both appears converted in pure energy.

We use this annihilation for image diagnostics in medicine. I remember a really good article (in Spanish) about the positronic techniques who detects the two gamma photons of this annihilation. But back to the origin of this post. The Pamela mission founds an explanation of this extrange peak of gamma rays.

There is a big probability that the origin of this positrons (that gives us this gamma rays) is the desintegration of a supersymmetric particle that also is a dark matter particle: the neutralino.

Maybe we are infront a prove of the existance of the dark matter, and also infront the prove that at least one of the supersymmetric particles exists. A Nobel prize is at stake...

Nice view of the shuttle

2008-07-23T20:13:00.002+02:00

I found via rss a really good video of the shuttle from a camera in a commercial fly:

Take a look in another place

2008-07-23T09:22:00.003+02:00

For a long time I read many things (It doesn't mean I understand it) about the supersymmetry as an explanation of many of the biggest questions in physics. The supersymmetric particles can explain the problem of the matter quantity in the universe. This problem is simple, the universe has to have more matter than we saw to be like we saw.

Today I read a post about a different way to find this undiscovered matter. Many time I read about astrophysical ways to try to see something in the sky. But this time is different, we like to try to create this matter as a collision result in the way to know if this can exist in this universe.

Deeper read about this type of matter, I think, can be the Wikipedia's article about neutralinos. Also there is in spanish a really good writter, who wrote about the amazin world of the particles.

Nice view of a synchrotron

2008-07-03T11:58:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, I celebrate the airplane license flying an helicopter... From the helicopter notification point Sierra of Sabadell to the Whisky entrance point, there is our synchrotron in the way.

We have 100MeV!!

2008-07-03T10:49:00.003+02:00

After delays, complication, problems, and whatever you can imagine... Yesterday, around 10 in the evening the beam at the end of the linac reach the energy of the electron gun was designed for.

It was a really special day for all of us that are involved on this process. It's a really exciting moment! But it's not the end, now we have to transport this beam in the transferline in order to put it into the booster ring.

Just for an hour

2008-06-27T09:52:00.004+02:00

Yesterday my mobile dies. Dies suddenly and fast. The mobile agonizes during hours until I decide to go to a mobile-shop to acquire the substitute... Just like an hour after this action, a friend announced me the Neo FreeRunner release.

Rage...

Binary pulsar system

2008-06-23T12:37:00.004+02:00

Our telescopes saw many dual star systems, here two star are orbiting between then their mass center. This two starts also rotates faster when the distance between is smaller, and this is one way to try to detect the gravitational waves specially if this pair is massive.

Also the sky have objects called pulsars, neutrons start that rotates fast and emits x-ray from the magnetic poles and can be thought to be like the lighthouses used to guide the pilots in the sea (close to the coast).

The Esa has a satellite to observe the x-ray sources called XMM-Newton. Last October this satellite saw something really interesting: a binary pulsar system. Interesting specially because the close impact effects of the emissions of each pulsar to the magnetosfere of the other. Have a nice read.

Repository mirroring

2008-06-21T23:38:00.003+02:00

This post title contain the necessary words to find a solution to the problem that I post at the beginning of this month. After some try touching what was not think to be touch (the files in the .svn directory of a checkout) I decide to send an email to the users list.

Why I didn't send it before? Easily I receive a feedback indicating me that I am trespassing the limits of the things that the users should be allow to do. Then I explain not only the intentions, and more the reasons why I want this feature. And a fast answer appears!

Yes, a tool to help what I want exist, and its name is svk! I'll use it and reflect the impression. Really thanks to Ryan Schmidt.

Just on time

2008-06-21T22:35:00.006+02:00

I read the recently published Firefox 3 also receive a vulnerability announce just 5 hours after the launch.

I don't understand the reasons of the Zero Day Initiative to publish it so early to the launch, and then say they only inform the Mozilla foundation for security. I my opinion, the ZDI organization probably know the bug before the launch (then the beta versions are also vulnerable) and the test if the Firefox developers fix it before the launch.

They like to be publicised because they take care on security, but I think they did in the other way. If they know the problem under the beta version and don't say anything they had the tools to avoid this announce. Only 5 hours separate this people from deserving a good job recognition, or to say 'please, you already had the opportunity to said before'.

Actualization: Interesting discussion found. It seem like the 2 version of Firefox is also vulnerable. This does mean they know before, but increase the doubt.

Have you ever seen a virus?

2008-06-21T11:54:00.006+02:00

I have in the aggregator a reference to the 'physics tao' that many time has interesting posts. Today we have available one about X-rays and virus. The resolution to see this really incredible little things is incredible. It seems to need really brilliant and coherent light, but a read of the referred article is mandatory.

Starting for the abstract, the words X-ray diffraction, increase my interest. Lest to read the complete article! Yes, it talks about Synchrotrons, about brilliant sources, cites the X-FEL, and the experiment was carried in Spring-8 (the highest electron energy synchrotron and the most brilliant x-ray source).

Did you ever meet a virus? It a really small organism and because of it length the light necessary to distinguish its parts has to be really energetic to see the structure a small distance detail.

In the article also has mention the effect of the radiation dose to the sample. Yes, the live structures doesn't like the radiation, but you need this light to see it. It seems a contradiction, but the way to do it is to reduce the exposition time that the sample has. A fast shutter is important, and now I understand better why I need to work for a ~1ms fast shutter for the NCD beamline. Reduce the exposition time of the sample to the x-rays to the exact time that the SAXS detector is available.

Uau! Here they talk about the improvement that can be the xfel use and a ultrafast pulses of <= 25 femtoseconds. This can allow more energetic dose during less time, but probably this relation is not linear. I say, more energy means much less time.

How can be a sun aurora?

2008-06-13T15:47:00.002+02:00

Reading this post about the end of the Ulyses program and also watching the fantastic good bye video I have a question for the air. I saw boreal auroras and its really fantastic, and difficult to photograph (also because it moves).

Our Sun has also a magnetic field called the heliosphere who protects the elements in the Solar Sistem from the interstellar medium. Also, as the video shows some particles can decay down to the Sun poles, as the solar wind does with us, and it may produce a similar show.

TauPanel

2008-06-11T18:22:00.006+02:00

In Alba, we are developing PyQt4 widgets for Tango, as you can read in many posts. Now is the torn of a generic widget for devices to show all the attributes:

This is a little early, and it's on the development beginning. It didn't have the features that the AtkPanel has. But time to time, it will. Right now it has support to read and write Tango attributes and to know the device status.

Future plans include, for sure, support for Tango commands, device and attribute properties, change the device during running time, and what else we think can be necessary...

I feel happy...

ImgBeamAnalyzer GUI

2008-06-10T15:01:00.005+02:00

Like what was done for the ImgGrabber, is now for the ImgBeamAnalyzer:

Basically is very similar but, because this device has much more scalar attributes and scroll has been add.

Now the next step has to be the TauPanel, generic for all devices.

Update:

Linac to Booster transferline

2008-06-10T10:45:00.003+02:00

This is an schematics draw of the transferline with we are working:

From the right hand comes the linac's electron beam. First of all two little (green) corrector magnets, followed by three (blue) quadrupoles. Then diagnostics devices, the Monitor and the Fluorescent Screen Beam Position/ Optical Transition Radiation with the ccd camera with I am working for the emittance measurement.

Then the (red) bending magnet who bends a little the beam to continue in the transferline, or bend it more to guide the beam to the diagnostics section. Under an straight line from the linac, after the bending magnet some synchrotron radiation appears and another ccd will take photos from this Synchrotron radiation monitor.

Following what we want to use now, in the diagnostics line that goes horizontally from the bending magnet, another (blue) quadrupole can be saw and the beam will kick another FS/OTR where we will calculate the energy of the electron beam and its energy spread. And if the screen is open, the beam will die in a Faraday cup at the end of the diagnostics line and the signal of this cup will be saw in an osciloscope.

ImgGrabber GUI

2008-06-09T18:09:00.004+02:00

Finally, after a hard fight, the Image Grabber has a little gui to be used:

The solution is not mine. This is a great point of the free software, someone in the esrf has hardly work on a PyQt4 widget. Both synchrotrons have really good relations and esrf is like the father. Our controls system is tango, and it is free software.

Also say, to manipulate the image it is not using directly the PyQt Image object. I will explain how.

svn multiple repositories checkout

2008-06-07T23:49:00.002+02:00

The title of this post is what I am asking to Google without success...

My idea is to have something like a branch and merge but with two svns. I like to have a secondary repository. This means, for me, to have a checkout from the main one and work normally with the secondary.

Why not the same repository? Because I don't have write permissions on the main one to make this branch but I like to synchronize to that one doing something like a merge.

The solution could be some scripting to rename directories to simplify and automatize this task... Ideas?

Quantum thermodynamics

2008-06-07T13:37:00.002+02:00

I read a post really interesting, the writer sometimes write good thing and I have this blog on the aggregator. Many times, on quantum mechanics (that I have less than a poor idea) you read something that breaks you schemas of who the world works.

In the reference that the blogger says also a reference to a Nature's article is said. But without an specific link. Still worst, they say recently reported but I need to go to the Nature's number 452 published the April 10th of 2008. But if you read when the article was received on the publication (October 18th 2007) and when it was approved (February 26th 2008), the recenly addquires much more sense.

Illegal massive mobile tracking

2008-06-06T15:43:00.003+02:00

From the news I discober an study of the human travel patterns, the Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) at Northeastern University has wanted to do an study about the mobility patterns that we have during our lives.

This is far from another study with volunteers that shows to the scientist their lives and they promise the privacy and the data anonymization. They, arbitrary, select 100.000 cell phones without the knowledge of the users under the excuse that the people will not be natural if they know the traking.

But WTF! Can be possible that someone without my permission (of a judge order) spy me? They could have data of where the people is and positioning the people you can deduce where this person lives and where he/she work. Also who the person is visiting, and where he/she goes on free time. It is a very hard intrusion!

First of all: ask for permision! The excuse of an statistic study or a scientific work is not enough! Who allows the phone companies to share this information?

The project starts

2008-06-01T16:51:00.002+02:00

The meditation time is over. The alpha sources of the branch 0.9 of the elliptic curve project has been upload to my svn repository. I say 'my' because this development files are not public until it has something useful to be publish. Many things are changing in the sources from the last 0.3 branch (that never saw the light).

I have a friend who sometimes says when we write code, we make bugs, as less code we write less bugs we make... I am completely agree with he, and this is one of the ideas that comes in the 0.3 branch: try to have the same code in the patch for the GnuPG 1.4 branch than the code that the libgcrypt 1.4 has.

Between them there are some differences, but the biggest ones has to be solve by the precompiler. Others can be solved by declarations. But the most important improvement that this merge has is the split of the code in different files. The first version was think to have everything together, in one file; now the cryptographyc code will live in the cipher directory, and the mathematic code in the mpi directory (at the end the operations between point are solved by low level operations over finite fields).

After the brainstorming did here, the best option, and the most pracmatic is to implement the Internet Draft for the ECC in OpenPGP.

Phoenix land in Mars

2008-05-26T14:24:00.002+02:00

I don't know if it is exactly but around the 23:38 zulu of the 25h of May of 2008 the spacecraft Phoenix lands on the Mars arctic pole.

The information is better to become from the experts than from my read and transcript. Then I suggest to read the sources: the Arizona university, and Nasa.

Iñaki Ochoa is gone

2008-05-23T21:54:00.003+02:00

Today is a day in mourning for the mountaineer people, Iñaki Ochoa de Olza dies after 5 days suffering a HACE at 7400m altitude complicated by a HAPE. The bad news are well explained here.

To suffer one of this illness is one of the worst things that you can have in the mountain. You need to descend as fast as you can, but when you have a really bat whether is when the mountain is saying you 'rest with me'.

We wants to stay in the mountain, he express this intention before. But by the way it is a really impossible mission to try to rescue the body.

The great this of the mountain is the fellowship that you receive from the other people. In the Annapurna the people that tries the rescue this day are still there. Now the priority is the descending of all the people that forgets their project and risk their lives to save Iñaki.

Thanks to this helpers.

Supernova birth

2008-05-23T17:45:00.003+02:00

I'm only one more of the ones who write something about the casual photo taked from a supernova in the explosion moment.

Artistic view (for sure, our telescopes cannot see like that)

As we can read in many places (many) some astronomers, that was studying a past supernova, found in the acquisition an abnormal x-ray emissions and they doesn't become from their object under study. this becomes just from the neighborhood.

Is really difficult to record an explosion, ask this to the war reporters. You never know where it will explode. As I read in a book, record and explosion so far doesn't give you the image, so close you will not have health to explain it. If you think 16.5 light years is far, I prefere to not be closer.

From Sierra Lima Lima, to Golf Romeo Oscar (and go back)

2008-05-08T16:48:00.008+02:00

The first trip alone. Take off from Sabadell with the icao name LELL (Lima Echo Lima Lima, in the NATO alphabet) and the iata name SLL (Sierra Lima Lima) alone in the airplane.

After the take off permission from Sabadell tower in the 13 way, I fly bearing 70 until notify 5 NM out the ATC (Nautical Miles), traffic information on 125.25, then change the bearing between 50 and 60 direction to the mountains. 20 minutes fly to arribe to the SW (Sierra Whisky) access point of Girona, iata name GRO (Golf Romeo Oscar) icao LEGE (Lima Echo Golf Echo).

Tuning the radio to 120.90 and call the tower 'Girona, buenos días de la EC-ERV' (Echo Charlie Echo Romeo Victor). 'EC-ERV le veo sobre SW proceda a viento en cola derecha pista 20, notifique establecido'. Easy, they saw me before do nothing... they are on my, and all the other medium birds from Ryanair, Spanair, and others (airplanes like a A320, much bigger than my C152).

'EC-ERV estableciendo viento en cola derecha 20', 'Roger ERV'. And before arrive the end of tail wind the allows me to land 'ERV autorizado a aterrizar, pista 20, viento 230 8KT' and the answer 'autorizado a aterrizar 20 ERV'. Base, final, and landing... 'ERV abandone por la primera salida y siga al amarillo'. It's funny to follow this yellow car to the parking platform.

In the Aena's office, a new fly briefing, back to the airplane and go back! 'Girona buenas tardes de la EC-ERV', 'EC-ERV adelante', 'EC-ERV en plataforma de aviación general para vuelo visual a Sabadell, solicito instrucciones de rodadura', 'Detrás del Ryanair en rodadura, ruede al punto de espera de la pista 20, detrás', this expresion of say two times 'detrás' is to be sure that you understand, the answer is mandatory 'Detrás del Ryanair en rodadura, rodar al punto de espera 20, detrás'.

In the wait point I did the engine test and announce the tower, I'm ready to take off with 'EC-ERV punto de espara 20 listo', the tower answer was 'Roger EC-ERV'.After two A320 take offs and one citation landin, arrives my torn: 'EC-ERV entre y mantenga', 'entrar y mantener EC-ERV'.

'ERV autorizado a despegar 20, viento 260 12KT', ready to take off! 'Autorizado a despegar 20 ERV'. Taking off in a 3Km way with a cessna that only needs 400 or 500 meters is funny, I was 500ft over the field before the end of the way. 'ERV notifique abandonando por SW'. The ground reference of the SW point is a castle but there is another littler one before when you go out. it means went I say 'ERV alcanzando punto SW' the tower says... 'Segun mi pantalla usted está aun a 5 millas de SW, pero si lo desea puede pasar a la escucha de traficos en 25 25'. Ups! this was my mistake... by the way, tuning the radio to 125.25 and direct to Sabadell...

A factory in polinyà was on fire, and when I arrive to the Echo access point of LELL ('ERV accediendo por punto echo a 2500 pies'). 'ERV debido a incendio dirijase directo a base izquierda de la 13, notifique establecido '. The rest of the fly was like the common ones in sabadell.

Now I have an stamp and a line on my fly book saying that I went to Girona as a pilot in command!

Append: A video in Microsiervos about the 'follow me' car in the Barcelona airport (iata BCN, icao LEBL ).

Bad news from Great Britain

2008-05-06T11:05:00.003+02:00

I read this article that is funny at the beginning because the author wrote the typical comparison of a synchrotron building to a donut. Also the first paragraph is good because some of the main reasons for the synchrotron existence are described (but there are others more). This tools are not made only to do the physicist busy and playing their toys, this building has something to produce in the society.

After years of people doing a bet on this infrastructure, many people can be forced to restart their specialization. Yes, because they have two options: work in another thing or move out the country. This type of job is really specialized. An accelerators physicist, or a protein crystallographic scientist can not be moved fast and easily to another type of job.

I understand, bad times would come, but the bad point is when science is becoming an exchange money. Badly is when everything can be explained by the bad times, good and bad maneuvers. Only insist in take care, read much and compare and contrast the information you have. Put it in doubt and create your opinion.

Nerd t-shirt

2008-05-05T17:55:00.007+02:00

For a long time, a little sheet of paper is traveling with me. The reason is because in the LHC visit I bought a nerd t-shirt.

As a manual, the t-shirt came with this paper explaining the image that you will like to dress. I have no idea, for me it like when you buy something with Chinese or Japanese symbols.

But they explain, the first line describes the forces that we already knows as some views of something unified: the electricity, magnetism and strong and weak nuclear forces.

The second line is about how the forces act with the fundamental matter particles (quarks and leptons).

The third describes how the mass is become real, from the higgs boson, and the fourth ables this unknown particle to do it job.

By the way, physics are not democratic. The existence or not of the higgs dowsn't depend of who many people likes this theory...

Čerenkov radiation (II)

2008-04-29T09:13:00.002+02:00

Just a brief note about the Čerenkov radiation, that it was already mentioned here. I found photos of this blue water in a German neutron research facility.

La suelta

2008-04-23T18:04:00.007+02:00

This morning around 9 zulu in the morning (zulu means Coordinated Universal Time, locally was 11), I flew the instructors leader. I did it more or less like other days but a little bit nervous because this instructors was flew with me to evaluate if I am already able to fly alone.

After 4 touch and go, the tower calls as to say this will be last one because other traffics wait to do the same maneuver. This instructor ask the tower if can be possible to land brings himself down because the pilot student is able to practice one circuit alone. The tower was agree...

After land, back to Romeo 2, Carles (the instructor) says me 'bye, bye', then I say to the tower 'Echo Romeo Victor, listo para rodadura'. Tower: 'Roger, Echo Romeo Victor, ruede a punto de espera 13'.

Two other traffics was on the wait point, and when I was ready I said to the tower and wait for permision. When my torn arrives: 'Echo Romeo Victor, después del tráfico en salida entre y mantenga detras', then 'después del tráfico en salida, entrar y mantener detras, Echo Romeo Victor'. And just before stop in the line radio says 'Echo Romeo Victor, viento calma, con precedente que mantendrá en circuito, autorizado a despegar 13'; where is the moment 'con precedente a la vista, autorizado a despegar 13, Echo Romeo Victor': full engine and at 60kt rotation speed and go to the air flying alone...

First, cross wind then tail wind, apply the pre-landing procedure and notify the tower that I'm turning left to base 'con precedente a la vista'. 75kt watching the landing way on my left. Turn left to final approach, control the landing way and my air speed. A second flap point is required but the landing maneuver was fine. Free way to the tower and came back to Romeo 2. Carles was there waiting for me to ask my impresions: simply incredible! Really nice! He gives me the suelta!

Higgs field

2008-04-19T23:36:00.003+02:00

In this moment when I am compiling my compiler, I am reading something about the Higgs field in 'Investigación y Ciencia' (the two months delayed Spanish version of Scientific American). With the sentence "In quantum theory, quantities such as mass are not set once and for all but are modiﬁed by quantum effects.", from the article "The incoming revolutions in particle physics", an interesting point came back to my mind.

There are many places where you can read, for example this article, from where the mass can come or if the mass is from the particle itself or it is a result with the Higgs field. But what came back was the question why the values of the mass are this ones and not another ones. Are they arbitrary selected or it has a reason.

As far as I can understand from this article, the Higgs boson mass/energy has to have a big relation with this values. Correct me if I am wrong but this should be one of the reasons why we need to turn on the LHC. The point where I am becoming really disoriented is when they talk about the Technicolor, and how to understand the Higgs is not fundamental itself but is made by a conjunction of pieces that we, probably, already know.

Really huge phenomenons are waiting to be discovered when this machine starts to produce de amazing torrents of data. Believe that Grid will be able to chew this information.

Present and past, simultaneous

2008-04-19T17:53:00.005+02:00

Did you ever thought to see an evolution in time needs to wait this time? People from the university of Heidelberg (in Germany) saw a pulsar under five different time perspectives at the same time. How to understand this? The explanation is the gravitational lensing.

In 10th April 2008 Nature you can find a short article about this and also in the HubbleSite you can find a good images about this. The source article is from The Astrophysical Journal, but only the abstract is accessible.

As far as I understand, the point is the galaxy in the middle. It curves the light from the quasar that cannot come directly to as (because something is in the middle) an it came from five different paths. The light travels different distances to arrives here, and it means each ways has differences on time scale. They arrive here at the same time, but then they need to start the trip on different moments.