Pictures
drorzel | August 12, 2010Now that she's officially two years old, SteelyKid gets to sit in the big chairs:
She also insisted on the forced-perspective thing to make her look even bigger compared to Appa. And the string cheese. She's all about the string cheese.
drorzel | August 12, 2010Following on yesterday's discussion of the vacuum hardware needed for cooling atoms, let's talk about the other main component of the apparatus: the optical system. The primary technique used for making cold atoms is laser cooling, and I'm sure it will come as no surprise that this requires lasers, and where there are lasers, there must also be optics.
There are lots of different types of lasers used for laser cooling experiments, but they all need to have certain properties: tunability, stability, and adequate power. Tunability is important because laser cooling requires light at exactly…
drorzel | August 11, 2010Over in the reader request thread, Richard asks for experimental details:
I'd be interested in (probably a series) of posts on how people practically actually do cold atoms experiments because I don't really know.
I needed to take some new publicity photos of the lab anyway, so this is a good excuse to bust out some image-heavy posts-- lab porn, if you will. There are a lot of different components that go into making a cold-atom experiment, so we'll break this down by subsystems, starting with the most photogenic of them, the vacuum system:
(Click on that for a much bigger version.)
This…
drorzel | August 8, 2010SteelyKid was down in Boston at her grandmother's for a few days, which was a nice break, but it's always good to get home to Chateau SteelyKid:
Notice the spiffy new grill in the right corner of the patio, Of course, when you're out of town for a few days, all sorts of work piles up in your absence:
The mower was also a birthday gift. It blows bubbles, sort of, but the bubble stuff leaked out and hadn't been replaced yet. The nice part of life in the suburbs is that when you're done mowing your lawn, you can grill up a tasty burger:
I love the look of intense concentration as she…
drorzel | August 7, 2010
Happy second birthday, SteelyKid! That wasn't taken on her birthday, but it's one of my favorite early pictures of her. Now, of course, she looks like this:
That is, when she'll hold still long enough to be photographed...
drorzel | August 5, 2010I meant to take a picture of SteelyKid yesterday, before she left for Grammy's, so we would have a Toddler Blogging shot for the week. Alas, I am a dope, so you will have to make do with this out-take from last week's shots, in which SteelyKid shares her opinion of her father's dodgy memory:
She's down in Boston at the moment, where we'll be heading tomorrow for her second birthday on Saturday. At last report, she was having so much fun, she didn't want to sleep, so, you know, whee!
drorzel | August 3, 2010SteelyKid's second birthday is Saturday, so we're getting her a few things. Given the recent video I posted, one of her presents was really obvious:
As you can tell, she's inherited her father's skillset. If the dunk picture doesn't convince you, this picture of her ace ball-handling ought to:
Not even two, and she can dribble it off her foot, just like her old man. She's a prodigy, she is.
The hoop and ball were a big hit-- we had to drage the ball along with us when we went out to dinner that night. The other big treat of the day was a visit from Grandma and Grandpa, who brought along…
drorzel | July 29, 2010I don't know if Dijon the giraffe has made a Toddler Blogging appearance yet, but in case she hasn't, here she is:
SteelyKid is in the process of explaining that Dijon is her giraffe ("My graph!"). Which she is, being a gift from Aunt Erin and Aunt 'Stasia. She's a rather heavy knit giraffe, and is awesome.
And that's all I've got for tonight's Toddler Blogging, as SteelyKid stubbornly refused to go to sleep, or even close her eyes for the hour and a half since bedtime, and I have a horrendous muscle spasm in my neck from sitting with her. Kate's tagged in on "Oh, God, go to sleep already!"…
drorzel | July 26, 2010The subject of the "spin" of the electron comes up again and again, so as pointed out in a comment, I really ought to do a post explaining what it is and how it works. As a bonus, this gives me the opportunity to do the dorkiest thing anyone has ever done with a cute-toddler video, namely this one:
(That's an early version of SteelyKid's new favorite game. I'll put a clip of the final version of the game at the end of this post.)
So, electron spin. Electrons, and all other fundamental particles, have a property known as "spin." This is an intrinsic angular momentum associated with the…
drorzel | July 22, 2010After a hard day of toddling, sometimes you just need to kick back on the couch with your sky-bison, and munch on a fruit strip:
You know what I mean?
drorzel | July 21, 2010Here's a picture of the ornamental pond we have in our back yard, showing the fountain that we run to keep the water circulating so it's not just a mosquito ranch:
You can see the brick that we have sitting on top of the pump housing to keep it submerged (it tends to tip over otherwise-- the filter box is a little top-heavy), and also the spray of water shooting up into the air.
You can't tell without some reference, but the pond level is actually a little lower than I like it at the moment. The lining leaks slowly, and every so often I need to put more water in. How do I judge the level,…
drorzel | July 15, 2010We've been doing weekly Baby Blogging (now Toddler Blogging) for a long time now-- this is week 101-- but it occurs to me that we've been shortchanging someone in all these pictures: Appa. He is, after all, a sky-bison, so it's about time we got a picture of him in flight:
SteelyKid says "I could totally do that, if Mommy and Daddy would let me."
(We've-- well, all right, I've-- started playing a game where I get Appa across the room from SteelyKid, say "Yip-yip!" and toss him across the room to her. Lately, she's started saying "Yip-yip!" as well, which makes it much cuter.)
(Kate is way…
drorzel | July 8, 2010I got sufficiently engrossed in writing a ResearchBlogging post for tomorrow that I almost forgot today's Toddler Blogging. To make up for it, though, today's post is using those three-dimensional effects that are all the rage these days:
Look out! There's a ball coming right at you!
What's that? The 3D isn't working? Are you wearing the glasses? Well, there's your problem...
As you can tell from the picture, SteelyKid is getting pretty good at throwing things these days. Catching, on the other hand, remains a bit of a problem:
(Alternate caption: "Telekinetic toddler moves balls with her…
drorzel | July 1, 2010Ah, the busy life of a modern homeowner: making phone calls, dealing with the mail, and doing some washing up:
Meanwhile, outside the house, Emmy ponders whether it would be worth the effort to huff and puff, or if trying to blow the house down would just get her scolded.
This isn't the greatest Appa-for-scale picture, but as a special bonus, below the fold we have a different reference measure:
From this, we can do a little image analysis, and say that SteelyKid is now 0.60 Mommys in height. And still growing rapidly.
The change in post title reflects the other big change around Chateau…
drorzel | June 27, 2010... because SteelyKid is a baby on the move, and she moves fast:
SteelyKid spent a long weekend with Kate's mom, and we went down there yesterday to pick her up. This picture, snapped during a playground visit this morning, gives you some idea of her energy level.
Accordingly, Kate and I are both exhausted. Which means no deep thoughts for you on the blog, but at least you got a cute baby picture out of the deal.
drorzel | June 24, 2010SteelyKid is spending a long weekend with Kate's mother, so we are baby-less. Which means no Appa-for-scale picture this week, alas.
Since I know some of you would freak out without the weekly cute-baby photo, though, here's another shot from the backyard playhouse:
As you can tell, Kate has an ever-so-slightly easier time fitting into Chateau SteelyKid than I do...
drorzel | June 20, 2010I've made a few oblique references to home improvement projects over the last week or so. These weren't for our house, but for SteelyKid's-- Kate's mom got her a playhouse for Christmas, which we finally got around to installing in the back yard. SteelyKid has taken right to home ownership:
Don't let her studied cool in that picture fool you, though. Getting the house was the highlight of the whole day:
(My parents were visiting for Father's Day/ my birthday, so they get a cameo in the video.)
Most of the rest of the afternoon was passed going in and out of the house, ringing the doorbell…
drorzel | June 17, 2010No elaborate pose this week, just simple, classic Baby Blogging:
A few months back, her weight had failed to increase as quickly as expected, so she had a couple of weight-check appointments scheduled. The latest was this week, when it was discovered that she had gained about three pounds since the last check-up (the proportional equivalent of me gaining 25-30 pounds) two months ago. She's now right back on track at the weight expected for a Great Big Baby.
And she's still the cutest thing in the world. She has recently become fascinated with cars and trucks, pointing them out all the time,…
drorzel | June 10, 2010Kate was away last Thursday, and just got back yesterday, so this is the first time in a week that all of us have been together. In honor of that, we'll break out the fancy camera remote technology for a group portrait (a Baby Blogging first!)
Emmy snuck into the lower left corner of the frame, to express her skepticism at all this shmoopy biped stuff.
drorzel | June 3, 2010I sometimes get comments asking why so many of the baby blogging pictures are taken from above. The answer is twofold: 1) I'm rather tall, and thus it's hard for me to get down to baby level to take pictures straight on, and 2) when I do try to get down to baby level, most of the pictures come out like this:
SteelyKid, like Emmy, interprets "Daddy near ground level" as "time to play" and comes charging over to me. It's usually dumb luck if I manage to get the camera up before she pounces on me.
So, if you want Appa-for-scale images, you're generally stuck with shots from above:
Fortunately…