MCNP

To save me the tedium of copying and pasting energy-dependent tally data in MCNP, I wrote up a couple of Perl scripts to do practically all of the work for me. Anyone who wants to visualize data like that from MCNP output should hopefully find these scripts useful.

Evolution personified

It strikes me as ironic when people personify evolution as some sort of designer. I was reading an article in SIAM News describing the complexity and mathematical modeling of finger movements, when I stumbled across this:

But nature, for no obvious reason, took a different route. Opting to locate the muscles in the palm and forearm, at a distance from the fingers themselves, evolution tinkered its way to a quasi-two-dimensional system of interconnected tendons, more like fishing net than fishing line. This decidedly nonlinear and complex solution, anathema to "reasonable" engineering design, has paid off handsomely.

In the 19th century or even early 20th century, I could easily imagine a scientific article marveling about the incredible design of the human body in the context of a divine Creator. But to use that kind of language when talking about random processes and natural selection seems kind of silly.

LaTeX ANS template

Well, for those of you who want to publish a summary for the American Nuclear Society transactions (or to write an abstract for the ANS student conference) but prefer LaTeX to Microsoft Word, today I completed a class and bibliography style that are (EDIT 6/2011) now completely compliant with the published ANS guidelines. Hopefully someone will find this useful. Example files and more details are here.

Grammar joke!

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"To."
"To who?"
"To whom!"

(source: the internet)

Transition to new blogger

After some tedious and some not-quite-as-tedious work, I've transitioned my blog back to Blogspot hosting with the new dynamic page serving. In order to make links to my old pages (and google links) work correctly, I added this to my .htaccess file to change any links on my old blog to pages on my new blog, except to the googlebot (so that hopefully it won't lose records of where my pages are):

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/blog/labels/
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*Googlebot.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^blog/labels/(.*).html$ http://reference-man.blogspot.com/search/label/$1 [R,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/blog
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*Googlebot.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^blog/(.*)$ http://reference-man.blogspot.com/$1 [R,L]

Setting up boot camp

Today I installed Windows on my Mac. (I'll need it to run MCNP this semester.) For my reference and for your enrichment, here's a few things I did to make my new system more homey.

For Mac-Windows interoperability:

• HFSExplorer, an alternative to MacDrive that gives read-only access to HFS+ (Mac-formatted) drives from inside Windows. (It needs Java.)
• Installed MacFUSE and NTFS-3G (and applied this fix to ntfs-3g) so that I can read and write to my Windows drive when in OS X.
• Exported my bookmarks from Safari to put them in Firefox for windows

To make Windows less annoying and more secure:

• Changed the theme from XP to classic (the menu bars and task bar take up a lot less space, and the colors are less garish)
• Ran Windows Update (and installed IE7)
• Installed Firefox, NoScript, and AdBlock Plus
• Installed a couple of other pieces of software from the Lifehacker top free Windows software list and the Power replacement list
• Disabled the clicky sounds in the audio control panel.
• Disabled autoplay with this hint
• Disabled the "nag bubbles"
• Changed the alt-tab behavior and modified my default Explorer file list behavior using part of this Lifehacker list
• Put a password on my user account (since it defaults to a blank password!)
• Disabled file sharing (which was on by default; seems pretty foolish)
• Disabled "offline files"
• Turned off the "welcome screen" so that Ctrl-Alt-Del behaves like it does on all the other domain-connected computers I've ever used
• Disabled the windows messenger service
• Swapped the Windows and Alt keys so that the keyboard has the same layout as a standard Windows one (using this key remap hint)
• Installed Cygwin, hid "My Documents" and "Network Places", made a shortcut from /cygwin/home/USER to my desktop, and changed its icon to the documents icon
• Went to Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Windows Components and unchecked Outlook Express so it would cease to reappear in my Start Menu
• Added Mac cursors

I have to say that being able to run Windows on here is nice. Apple's job with making it compatible with the Mac hardware is fantastic: all the necessary drivers are installed by simply inserting the 10.5 install DVD into the drive. It includes drivers for WiFi, Bluetooth, the iSight video camera, and even maps all the hardware buttons (sound volume, eject, etc.) to their proper functions.

With Cygwin, I don't have to mess around with the DOS shell, and I can also use its X11 server with MCNP's (admittedly primitive) visualization.

A year with my car

It's been a year since I bought my 2001 Honda Civic.  Aside from some problems with the tires and a little routine maintenance, it's done very well.  Today I crunched some numbers regarding the cost to own the car and the fuel mileage it's been getting. Yeah, I keep all sorts of data when I fill up the car, get repairs, etc. I know, I'm a super-nerd.

So it's gotten an average of 35 mpg over the last year, which rocks. Also, including the purchase price of the car, inspections, insurance, gas, repairs, etc., it's cost me $0.80 per mile. That's not bad at all.

Whatever cat the latest version is

Today I finished my upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard.” So far I haven't encountered any features I can't live without (I don't have Time Machine set up; I use an svn repository for my personal documents). Indeed, I've already found a few things that seemed more limiting than previous versions, especially in Spotlight-based “smart folders.” You can no longer choose what columns in list view are available inside a smart folder: you can only see the name, kind, and last opened date. Unless I'm missing something, this means that you can't sort a smart folder or search option by modification date. Additionally, you can no longer choose which folder or volume to search via a new query. It's a kind of hit-or-miss thing where you must click on the folder you want to search, and then use the search item in the toolbar.

Another thing is that it doesn't seem as stable. I spent half an hour trying to track down a Finder crash related to modifying permissions. It turns out that it's a problem related to ACLs (access control lists) and the more full integration with the new system. Finder apparently balked at using folders with standard UNIX permissions. Changing a parent directory's permissions and telling it to apply recursively solved the problem to an extent; apparently you can also use chmod to change ACLs without having to mess with the Finder.

The translucent menubar doesn't bother me; my backgrounds are usually pretty uniform and dark along the top edge. I have also changed the dock to the less visual distracting uniform grey via this hint.

It's not all bad though. Spotlight is significantly quicker; the quick preview thing is pretty handy, and it's nice to finally have a unified appearance.

More of the Same

I found out today that at UMich, at least in the nuke department, Ph.D. students are discouraged from doing a master's thesis. It's usually a function of coursework: I think it's something like 30 hours have to be taken.

Also, qualifiers are given at the end of January and May. (School starts Jan. 3 and ends April 20.) I might take mine next May, since I am told that the reactor theory course I am taking this semester factors heavily into it.

ANS meeting next week: I present in 7 days 12 hours.

Centrifuge enrichment

So yesterday I had the probably-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit a uranium enrichment facility, in Portsmouth, OH. It used to enrich with gaseous diffusion until the mid-80's when the slump in the industry caused it to shut down. At its peak, it was consuming 2500 MW of power, running up an electricity bill in the tens of millions per month.

Recently a company called USEC has leased the facility and classified centrifuge technology
from the Department of Energy. They have improved upon the centrifuge technology and set up a pilot cascade of about 12. Each centrifuge is about 45 feet tall, and has a capacity of around 350 SWU, around a factor of 10 larger than the european centrifuges. The centrifuges consume 5% of the power of the gaseous diffusion plants per SWU -- the technology level required (even if you had schematics you would still require high-tech materials and precision machining) is much higher than gaseous diffusion.

On the tour we got to see the outside of six of them assembled -- the inside of course is highly classified -- and walk through the building where they will work. (The part where their prototype cascade is built is sealed off from the area in which we were allowed to be escorted. There was a gate at the edge of the property, a fence around the whole building complex near the parking lot where we were badged, a fence inside the giant buildings where the centrifuges were to be housed, and finally the fourth covered fence inside of which only those with a Q clearance could enter.)

So this looks to be pretty promising. The main obstacle is that right now, enriched uranium imports are reduced by protective tariffs that will be disappearing at some point in the near future. It is unclear whether USEC can become operational before and cost-competitive at that time. If they are able to, then they will be making a lot of money, because once the megawatts-to-megatons program stops providing utilities with enriched uranium, and with the likely upsurge in nuclear power brought on by the impending energy crisis, the demand for enriched uranium will guarantee that these guys will be operating at full capacity.