Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Cool Panoramas I Made

Check out these cool panoramas!

Top of Temple Basin, in Arthurs Pass

Top of Mt.Sunday, location of Edoras in LOTR

Sadly, Blogger doesnt allow you to make the photos fairly big.
I create these through Arcsoft's

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Why me?

Heres an email I recently received from my professor about the final exam:



So far in Relativity we have covered the 4-vector notation (104-105),
and most of the concepts in the space-time section (118-122).
This week I'll review a little about the Energy-Momentum vector and
4-vector scalar products to tidy up what we discussed in the tutorial.
However, I will mostly concentrate on the postulates of relativity and
the Lorentz transformations (106-113).

I think that the material actually presented in the problems and
solutions is correct (though I don't remember exactly what I meant by
the last sentence on Page 2 of the Tutorial solution), but the
relationship between the Laplacian (grad^2) and the metric is more
complex than I implied in the tutorial. So deriving eta_ij from ds^2 is
fine, but it would be best to use the relationship eta^ij eta_jk=
delta^i_k to derive eta^ij. And even once you've done that you need a
more complicated formula to generate the Laplacian from the metric
tensor. This will be explained in the General Relativity course...

In summary, the main take-home message is that there are non-trivial
metrics in curvilinear coordinates and unavoidable negative signs in the
metric when you start doing Lorentz transformations. In General
Relativity it become even more complex, but that's a matter for another
course...

Best Wishes,
Mike Reid


If you understand half the words he said, please take my final for me. Because I did not.

Pizza Taco



Tuesday nights you can get a large dominoes pizza (which is NOT a large pizza from back home, these are puny 12” pizzas) for 6$. So after stumbling across this fantastic idea, Carlos and I had to try it out on Pizza Tuesday night. I give you: The Pizza Taco.
Ingredients:
1 large(NZ large) pepperoni dominoes pizza
.75 kilograms of minced beef
Lettuce
Tomato
Shredded cheese
Sour cream

I have to say, I thought having the huge Big Al’s burger from Fergburger was fatty, but this was a whole new level. There was so much grease, so much meat and dairy products; it was probably the grossest/greatest thing I’ve ever eaten.

BBQ in The Park


In Hagley Park, you can BBQ at various locations around the park courtesy of the city. No need for charcoal, propane or a gold coin to start the grill, just press a button. So Jj and I decided to have a full kiwi experience and go for some sausages on toast. The lamb and venison sausages were great, especially with grilled onions and the main ingredient: H&P Sauce (The British equivalent to A1 sauce). Can’t wait to take full advantage of this when I’m on the road(or if I’m ever a hobo in NZ)!

Tea Party

Settle down class, our class on University of Canterbury Culture brings us to today's lecture on: The Tea Party.
I'm slightly confused on the name, being that I did not drink or even see Tea at this party. The Tea Party, is an annual celebration at UC for the end of the academic year. The only difference this year, was that from the earthquake, classes were pushed back a week. But although we had classes next week that didn't stop us from our partying. Let me start you off from the beginning of the day.



4am: Wake Up. Start Drinking
Waking up way too early, and drinking beer with pancakes is not my ideal morning. But the Tea Party is an event I've been hearing about since my first week in New Zealand. Here are the unofficial requirements for the Tea Party, and you have to pick one.
1. Six Before Six (Six alcoholic drinks before 6am, the one I picked)
2. Eight Before Eight
3. Goon Before Noon (Bag of wine about 28 drinks before Noon)
4. Crate before Eight (Crate of Beer before 8pm)
and a bunch of other ridiculous rhyming requirements.
Because we were waking up early, I decided to stay at Mark's flat the night before along with a few other friends who would partake in the festivities.

6am: Finished the six beers, off to get ready for the Party
At the Tea Party, everyone dresses up, as anything. I decided to be a hobo. Gloves missing fingers, flannel shirt, wool sweater, messed up jeans, and a cardboard sign that says : "Family kidnapped by ninjas; Need $$$ 4 Karate Lessons"


10am: Try to enter the Party.
You can see while waiting on line who continued drinking after their requirements, or who was still desperately trying to finish right on line. I got in with the Security guard if Ive been drinking, and after telling him I have a little, he said " You don't look like you've had a little". Well, sir, that's because its part of the costume, I'm a drunk hobo." And sure enough, he let me in.



11am-6pm Dance
Once I got in, there was probably over 2,000 drunk, dressed up students all over the UCSA building amphitheatre. There were some great costumes. Lego men, The Beatles crossing Abbey Road, Hulk Hogan, Duff Man, Goon-man, etc.




During the party there was about 10 bands playing over the course of nine hours. Some great artists played, such as Kids of 88 and The Naked and Famous. You don't know them of course, they're only famous to the four million people on this tiny island.










Also, as the organizers are students themselves, they know of the drinking tradition for the Tea Party. Therefore they had all the free food you could take. Spring Rolls, Rice Balls, Pizza, Meat Pies, Fries etc. The ticket cost about 40$ for nine hours of entertainment, But I made sure I got 40$ worth of food.


Also, remember how i wore my flannel shirt and wool sweater as my costume? Well that Mr.Sun decided to turn the day to about 80 degrees. I was dying!



Anyway, Great costumes, great music, hilarious drunk acts made another successful Tea Party. Most people passed out by 8pm that night, after waking up at 4am to start drinking. But my flatmates and I decided to continue the festivities at my flat, and then proceeded to go downtown to dance some more. I got back around 5am that night, which meant I was up for over 24 hours that day. There are some great photos from the flat party, which I hope to post soon.