Home sweet home

Australia, Copenhagen, Sydney

I finally managed to find the time to write a few lines after returning to Copenhagen, home sweet home.

Last week we finished our (very nice) Australia trip with yet another slightly annoying two-days-without-sleep trip from down under to up here. Actually it also had it’s nice moments: on our flight from Abu Dhabi we had comforting two four-seat rows and a baby bed for the three of us. There were only in total 60 passengers on a plane with 280 seats. Dunno how this works out for the economics of the airline, but I wanna fly this way all the time now. Unfortunately our six hours stay in Düsseldorf and the subsequent flight were already much less pleasing. Well, the flight was actually fine.
Arriving in Copenhagen we actually had worse weather than when leaving in Sydney (remember it’s winter down there these days). It’s good to be back ;)
Well actually it was not all good, since I was fighting a mixture of lack of sleep and jetlag for the past days … but I think I finally defeated it today.

Maybe to add a few more lines about Australia, Sydney in particular …
We had a couple of days in Sydney after the end of ICHEP. Which we basically spent with walking half of Sydney, the Manly peninsula and various beach/costal walks.
Same as Melbourne, it’s a really nice city. The weather was quite a bit better and we actually got slightly sunburned (once again, it’s winter down there).

I put up a few panoramas in my gallery’s Cities and Nature folders … maybe I’ll add a few more later.

Destination: Australia

Australia, Melbourne, Outreach, Physics

For those that didn’t know yet, I am currently in Melbourne, Australia. The main reason is probably the 36th International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) that currently takes place at the Melbourne Convention Centre. Another reason is the first public display of my ATLAS model in the Melbourne Planetarium during the same time (actually longer than that).

And since I am going to spend about three weeks in Australia, we decided to make it a family trip, so Heike and Erik joined in.

Flying Berlin – Düsseldorf – Abu Dhabi – Melbourne, we spend about two days in planes and on airports to get to our first destination in the centre of Melbourne. Still fighting with a bit of jet lag I went to see the folks of Melbourne University (cheers to Caroline and Dave) and Tanya from the planetarium on Friday. After getting a bit of an introduction to University and the Centre of excellence for particle physics in Australia, I went to see the exhibition and the ATLAS display at the Planetarium for the first time. Quite a nice casing and setting as well as some nice posters and videos in the installation (they also made a time-lapse video of their build in Melbourne about three weeks ago).

On the weekend we managed to get a bit out of town to see a wild life parks (with Kangaroos, Koalas and all that), some national parks (with actual ‘wild’ Koalas) and the Great Ocean Road. We actually rented a car and I had my first left-driving experience, which was quite nice due to the (at least for me) surprising fact that though everything is opposite in local cars, the pedals are the same way as in right-driving cars (accelerating right, breaking middle/left).

Today ICHEP finally started – which is the reason why I managed to write this blog as I didn’t have (affordable) internet before :( – and it started with a blast: they/we found the Higgs, well we found some boson that is compatible with the/a Standard Model Higgs, to be politically correct (or what you call it). Anyways … quite some excitement, both here and at CERN, where the results were actually presented (we just got a live feed here). But after that the reception seemed to be more exciting for most people (mainly because many people might have had an idea before the actual presentations).

One minor detail that was interesting (at least I thought so) … CERN’s press release on this issue was released already after CMS’ presentation and not after ATLAS’ results were shown as well. Also this time the release quoted only one spokesperson (CMS’) instead of both.
Hmm? But meh …

We’ll see what else this ICHEP has to offer, starting tomorrow morning …

Honour & Glory – UEFA European Championship ’12

Honour & Glory

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!
Congratulations to Troels for his stunning performance in this year’s UEFA betting game.
It’s the first time that someone ended the game with an average of more than one point per match (and Troels had 1.3). Also he managed to stay on top as a single leader for in total 28 matches.

Of course congratz also to Basti and me (hehe) for making second and third place.
It has to be mentioned that Basti as well did manage to have an average of above one point per match (1.03) and that he holds the title for the most correct tendencies in a row (seven matches).

As promised there will be prices for the first three places – to be picked up in person at our place. ;)

Thanks everyone for taking part in this year’s UEFA betting game and see you for the next occasion!

Find the results here.

Honour & Glory – UEFA 2012

Football, Honour & Glory

The group phase has finished: time for a little resumé!

It seems like my web site features a security hole and Troels has found it. Jokes aside, it’s hard not to notice his slight dominance in this year’s UEFA betting game. After his 17th and 6th place in UEFA 2008 and FIFA 2010, respectively: quite an improvement! I know that the one that laughs last, laughs loudest; but the rest of the field, including titleholder Simon, has to improve significantly to beat Troels’ lead. Well actually, there is already now some who do not have to think about a strategy to beat him anymore. Just after the group phase, this is actually a novelty for Honour & Glory football betting. Besides that, second and third place are still possible to reach for everyone in the field, though some might have to fight harder than others. Another novum is the fact that Troels continues to score on average more than one point per match (actually 1.46). And just to put out another name in this resumé, Basti managed to get the stage win for having the most correct betting tendencies in a row (seven) after the group phase.

Find the current results here.