I should have been better about taking more pictures of the people and food, but I was busy grilling.  Megan also made a chocolate almond cake topped with cheesecake topped with dark chocolate frosting with raspberries on the side that was every bit as delicious as it sounds!  Here are some of the recipes so that I can repeat them some other day.

Spiced Chicken and Grape Skewers

These were fun because most people haven’t had grilled grapes before. They go really well with the chicken, and their juiciness makes up for the fact that I tend to overcook everything when I grill!  This is pretty much identical to the recipe from the Food Network.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1 pound chicken breast, cut into cubes
1 1/2 cups green grapes
8-10 skewers

1. Whisk together the oil, lemon, garlic, and spices in a small bowl.
2. Pour over the chicken and let marinate for 30 minutes (I kept it in a plastic bag for easy mixing).
3. Alternate grapes and chicken pieces on the skewers
4. Grill for about 3 minutes per side

Veggie Kebabs

A simple vegetable marinade with some middle eastern spice that goes well with the grape chicken above.  This recipe is also similar to one from the Food Network.

Ingredients
2 bell peppers
1 onion (I forgot to do this)
1 zucchini or summer squash
a few handfuls of grape tomatoes
1/2 container of mushrooms (not sure how big the container was…)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper

1. Chop up all vegetables into skewerable shapes, cut mushrooms in half
2. Place vegetables on skewers
3. Whisk together all marinade ingredients
4. Brush marinade over vegetables and sit for 10-15 minutes
5. Grill for about 3 minutes per side

Deluxe Israeli Couscous

This is basically the recipe you get on the back of the box from Trader Joe’s Israeli Couscous, but it is even better if you use their Harvest Grains mix since it has couscous and a few other colorful grains as well:

Ingredients
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/3 cup pine nuts
3 tbsp butter
1 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1/2 package TJ’s Harvest Grains(or just Israeli Couscous)
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
optional: lemon rind, parsley, etc
(Note: this is from memory, and may be wrong… if in doubt, follow the package)

1. Fry up 1 tbsp butter and the pine nuts until golden (2-3 min), then set aside.
2. Add remaining 2 tbsp of butter and fry up onions until tender
3. Add cinnamon stick, bay leaf, and couscous. Fry 5ish minutes, stirring occasionally
4. Add chicken broth and salt and bring to boil, then reduce to low heat
5. Wait until liquid is all absorbed (10ish minutes)
6. Turn off heat, add pine nuts, raisins, cranberries, and any other goodies you can think of

Back in May we bought some plants from the town farmers’ market to grow in pots on the porch.  We started with three types of flowers, two Early Girl tomato plants, and some cilantro.  We added basil a few weeks later.

Many of the plants have been growing well since then. The tomatoes started sprouting tomatoes a few weeks ago, although they haven’t grown much since then. The pansies and “pink” flowers have been doing great, although the snapdragons lost all their flowers and didn’t seem very happy after a week. We haven’t had much luck with the cilantro either… it quickly shot up very tall and sprouted flowers.

Originally we planted everything in pots that were much too small. Last weekend I repotted all the herbs and fed them and the tomatoes with some organic plant food. I did an experiment with the basil and only gave half of the plants the food… after one week its pretty clear that it does make a difference!

I’ll let you guess which is which…

The biggest surprise in our garden came the morning after we had a very violent thunderstorm at the end of May. We went down to check how the plants were doing and found this little guy hiding among the flowers! I have no idea how we got there–our porch is 10 feet above ground level and cement on all sides. My only guess is he was up in one of the trees to the side of our porch and parachuted down.

In the hopes that my messages will be remembered beyond the department’s spam filters, I’ve decided to record some of them on this blog.  So here is this week’s Thursday T-Mail.

This week’s tea is graciously sponsored by XXXX, and will start in the atrium at 4PM sharp. I apologize in advance for the length of this email, as I attempt to combine our recent themes of history and astronomy, along with the story of perhaps the most unlucky researcher in history. I’m also sad to report that this will be the final tea of the semester!

Edmund Halley (he of the comet [1]), was an astronomer and scientist born in 1656. One of Halley’s many contributions was to suggest a way of measuring the mass of the Earth. Via a circuitous path of equations (with thanks to Newton), Halley pointed out that by measuring the time it took for Venus to pass across the face of the Sun during its orbit, one could calculate the universal gravitational constant, G, which in turn could give you the mass of the Earth [2]. Unfortunately, Venus does not pass across the sun very often, and to make the calculation would require measuring the time of passage from multiple view points across the world.

As a result, in 1761, the first significant internationally cooperative scientific venture was formed, with scientists across the globe setting up their telescopes and Timex watches to record Venus’ trip. If you’ve experienced the “joy” of attempting a research project overseen by multiple advisors and with collaborators in different parts of the world, you can predict how well this worked out: disastrously. Not only did the participants fail to gather sufficient clean data to reach any reliable conclusions, it led to one of the most unfortunate research stories I’ve ever heard, the story of Guillaume Le Gentil [3,4].

Le Gentil was a French scientist who planned to observe the transit of Venus from India. He set off on his journey a year ahead of time to ensure his timely arrival, but met so many misfortunes en-route, that he was still on the ship when Venus passed by the sun in 1761, and thus was unable to make any measurements. However, the nature of Venus’ orbit meant that it was to pass the sun again 8 year later, so Le Gentil continued to India to be ready for the subsequent passing. For 8 years he arranged his viewing station and prepared his instruments. On June 4, 1769, Le Gentil’s nearly ten year journey was to reach its climax, and he prepped his equipment under clear blue skies. Then, just as Venus was about to start passing over the sun, a cloud appeared and completely blocked his view of the event [4].

Things only got worse for poor Le Gentil. He packed up his gear and headed home, but was further delayed by dysentery and hurricanes off the coast of Africa. When finally he returned to France, more than 11 years after his departure, he discovered that his relatives had declared him legally dead, and had happily looted his estate.

I hope that this tale puts any of your own research disappointments in perspective. And remember: never, ever give up, because the harder you work on a project, the more comical and ironic your failure may be!

[1] http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/comets/halley.html
[2] http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Svenus1.htm
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Le_Gentil

-Tim

My trip was to start with a flight from Hartford to Philadelphia and then a flight on to Dublin. I’m used to things going terribly wrong at some point during my international flights, so I was less than surprised when while sitting in the terminal in Hartford, sirens started going off and the loudspeakers informed us of a “critical situation” requiring us to evacuate the building. People gradually got up and headed towards the exit of the security area. There, everyone seemed to be milling around, unwilling to leave the area since then we would have to check back in through security. Weighing the risk of a fiery explosive death against having to take off your shoes is quite a difficult decision! Just before I was about to give in and leave the building, the sirens stopped. There were no further messages or explanations over the intercom, but we all assumed that this meant everything was fine and we were allowed to go back to our gates.  I suppose the sirens also could have stopped because the terrorists finally reached the control tower and disabled the alarm, but fortunately it appears to only have been a false alarm.

In the end my flight left more or less on time and we reached Philly with plenty of time for me to buy an overpriced slice of pizza and head to my gate. I was happy to see my plane already at the gate almost an hour early, and naively predicted an on time departure. Naturally that was foolish of me, and we ended up leaving about an hour late. Luckily I had no other flights to meet, and I ended up reaching Dublin only a little later than expected.

Once in Dublin I wasted time looking for an ATM (it turns out there was only one as the other two were out of service). At first I mistook the ATM’s line for the line to a Disney World ride since it wrapped around and around the terminal. Realizing this, I simply I changed $20 at a currency exchange and bought my bus ticket to go downtown.

I didn’t dally in downtown Dublin as I was anxoius to get rid of my luggage. I took the next bus to University College Dublin (about 20 minutes outside of town). On the bus I saw someone vaguely familiar carrying a Dell laptop case, and I sucessfully guessed that he was also going to the same conference. In fact he was a Rutgers student, and the following day I discovered he had actually been my TA for the Parallel and Distributed Systems course while I was an undergrad there the previous year.

We eventualy found our way to the registration area for the conference. We checked in, but didn’t go to any of the day’s tutorials. Instead I headed over to the dorms where I was to stay. There I discovered I had not been put on the list for a room, so I spent two hours sitting in the shade of a very nice tree waiting for the residence manager to return.

Eventually my housing was resolved and I dropped off my things and took the bus back downtown, as it was still only early afternoon. After a brief stop at an internet cafe, I walked down O’Connel Street to Trinity College.

Trinity has a very pretty campus full of old stone buildings and nice green lawns that you are not allowed to walk on. I stealthily followed a tour group about for a bit, and learned about the residences of a few noble laureates and other trivia. After an unsuccesful search for free wireless, I settled down on the main green where the students seemed to be gathering for their evening beers. As I said, you aren’t allowed to sit on the grass, so they were restricted to about a 15 foot zone of grass sourounding several acres of pristine grass. Somewhat strange, but I guess it adds to the social atmosphere.

After taking a brief nap on the lawn (I was jet lagged!) I headed back to UCD for an early bed time.

The next day I was up fairly early for the conference start at 8AM. The talks had mixed levels of interest. Most of the keynotes were industry speakers with high level talks about broad system automation that weren’t overly interesting. The later talks were better. I gave a 10 minute talk on the self-managing storage system I was presenting on behalf of a former student in my lab.

I ended up leaving the poster session early to go to dinner with some researchers from HP and IBM. The guy from HP had terrified me earlier in the day when he came up to my poster and immediately began complaining that we had “mischaracterized Jason’s work.” Since I had no idea who Jason was, I had some difficulty responding, although I must have placated him enough as he paid for my dinner later on! We went to Eden, a rather fancy restaurant downtown. Afterwards we went to a fairly touristy bar in the Temple Bar area and had some Guiness. It was interesting to talk to them about life in Industry.

At the end of the day, the conference banquet was at Johnny Fox’s Irish Pub… the highest pub in all of Ireland. Also sure one of its largest tourist traps! We sat at long tables on little benches and drank Guinness while waiting for our food. I had the rack of lamb, which was actually quite good. Very tender. The desserts on the other hand were less exciting.

After another long period of sitting around, the night’s entertainment began. There was a group of traditional Irish musicians who were probably a little disappointed by our complete lack of knowledge of the lyrics to the Irish songs that they kept trying to make us sing. The volumes on their microphones was poorly set up, so we couldn’t hear what they were singing at all. This was followed by some traditional “hooley” dancing. Two men and three women jumped around on stage in a tap dancing style show.

When this was over, it was nearly midnight. We had expected dinner to only last until 9, so people were itching to leave. After all, there were talks starting again the next morning at 8 AM, and we had a 30 minute ride back to the hotels! Just as we all got up to go, the announcer told us that the band was about to return for another performance. In an extremely awkward moment everyone looked around and then continued their way out the door. I’m sure the band was a bit surprised when they returned to an empty hall!

Thursday was the last day of talks, and they went by pretty quickly, although it still lasted until around 6pm. I was tired so I headed back to my dorm and relaxed for the evening.

Friday morning I was finally free, so I headed into town. It was Bloom day (for James Joyce’s character in Ulysses), so I went by the pub on Duke St which is supposed to be one of the main stops. I was a little disappointed – there were a ton of people standing around, but none of the street performers or reciters which I had heard about. Perhaps I came at the wrong time.

Next I headed to the Natural History Museum, although once I was inside I discovered I was actually in the National Museum instead. That was also on my agenda for the day, so no big problem. They had interesting exhibits on Viking and Medieval history. Next I went a little further down the road and made it to the actual Museum of Natural History. They have something like 10,000 animal specimins on display. Some were very interesting, including skeletons and antlers from Giant Irish Deer – a long extinct creature which made their moose specimin look tiny.

After this I headed to the National Art Gallery which has a mix of classic paintings and a large Irish section including the work of the Irish impressionist Yeats.

And that seems to be all I wrote down.  The following day I took a nice trip up to Glendalough where I took a slightly rainy hike through some amazingly green scenery.

Gal made a fennel pork roast that has possibly the greatest gravy in the world. As you can see, we went through quite a few bottles of wine, including a few special dessert wines. There was a Chianti Classico that Aruna and Niranjan had picked up during a tour of the Castello il Palagio vineyard in Italy (which Bobby found especially irresistible as seen above). We also tried an unusual red ice wine — wine made from grapes picked after the first frost which gives it an extra sweetness, and a nice bubbly Moscato d’Asti.

We were all sad to see Gal go, but at least we got to celebrate his departure in style (and yes, I am wearing a tuxedo in the picture above).

Later in our trip we returned to Nelson County (for more gluttony) and witnessed a spectacular sunset. There are always nice views from their front yard, but the wide glowing sunset really showed off the mountains!

When we first arrived, there was far more snow in “tropical” Virginia than in Massachusetts!

We also took a ride up into the hills around their house so we could see what real farm country is like.

Thanks to Monika for the extra pictures!

However, most of us had canoed this same trip at least once before, so we were confident we would find ourselves a campsite for the night. So we set off in a pair of canoes and a kayak. The weather the night before had been miserable, but fortunately the skies began to clear as we headed downstream.

We’d been let off at Dingman’s Ferry along with a busload of other canoeists, including a horde of boy scouts, so we tried to get a quick start and pull ahead of the crowds. Before long, we had the river to ourselves, and we paddled on at a reasonable pace. We stopped for lunch at a large campground which conveniently had picnic tables and bathrooms. The delicious meal of bread, cheese, and salami refueled our bodies, and we sped off again as the boy scout troop, screaming and waving pirate flags, nearly caught up to us.

Typical canoeists we were not. For one thing, we paddled rather than just letting the current carry us downstream. Second, for some reason, beer had been deemed too bulky for the trip since we lacked a large cooler. Instead, we floated down the river sipping whiskey (and large quantities of water as the sun attempted to bake us alive later in the trip).

Later in the afternoon of our first day, I spotted a bald eagle perched in a tree on the bank. We slowed our pace to see if it would move, and before long it gave us a nice show: it swooped down from the tree past us and ripped a fish out of the water before returning to a new tree to consume its prize. Take that terrorists! America is AWESOME!

We saw at least one other bald eagle further down the river, however, as the afternoon wore on we began looking more intently for something else: a campsite to stay in for the night. The Deleware Water Gap is a great place to do overnight canoeing because it has dozens of small campsites along the sides of the river, as well as on some of the larger islands. However, the majority of the sites are located in the first half of the trip, and we soon realized that we were well past the halfway point, and that the pickings ahead would be slim.

At the time we didn’t realize it, but at this point we had traveled over 20 of the 28 total miles in our two day trip. Twenty miles of canoeing, even with a moderate current is pretty hard work, and we were getting increasingly tired and desperate as we knew there were both limited campsite options, and a handful of other canoes ahead of us looking for spots. If we slowed down, even more might catch up.

We came upon one of the many small islands in the river. Chris, alone on his kayak, decided to head to the left around the island in search of camp sites, while the rest of us in the other two canoes stayed to the right. We soon realized that the island was much longer than we had anticipated. While almost all of the campsites up stream had clear signs indicating that they were indeed camp sites, the park service apparently decided to not only make the sites on the bottom of the half less frequent, but also less well marked. Megan and I spotted a path on the island, and pulled up our canoe. My investigation found that the island did in fact contain about six different campsites, as well as the fact that it was completely covered in poison ivy. Unfortunately, Chris, having kayaked along the other side of the island was nowhere in sight. Mike and Matt continued paddling downstream hoping to catch Chris at the bottom of the island while Megan and I saved our campsite. About ten minutes passed, and I became increasingly concerned that we would all become separated. I was partially worried about the bears and river pirates who might like to eat us alive, but mainly focused on the fact that all of the food was in one of the other canoes.

Luckily, I soon spotted Mike, Matt, and Chris wading back up along the edge of the island pulling their canoe and kayak. We spent another ten minutes trying to pull the canoes up the absurdly slippery mud cliff that led to our site, but first Mike gave us a demonstration of “Crazy Canoeing”. By some miracle, he did not die.

We made camp, eventually built a fire (with the help of some stove fuel since the wood was all soaked from rain), and heated up some chili. We were all exhausted, so we didn’t last long before collapsing into our tents. The next day we were up early, and after a hearty oatmeal breakfast we set off on the rest of our adventure. We knew we were well beyond the halfway point, but we were surprised when we came upon our pullout spot at Kittattiny Point well before lunch time. All in all, a pretty great trip.

A few more pictures, mostly of the bald eagle, are here.

I just got back from a conference in Big Sky, Montana. The conference hotel was up in the mountains at a ski resort, and although they were starting to get their first snow of the season, the slopes weren’t quite ready yet. The scenery was quit breathtaking (especially for someone from New Jersey), but unfortunately I only got to walk around and take pictures during one of the cloudy days. The conference itself was quite interesting. It was much busier than any of the others I’ve been to. I met a number of new interesting people, and got to see a few other familiar faces which was nice.