Caroline Tanzi (Bartlett)

August 4th, 2011

So after today I'll have 2 more weeks of work. I submitted my abstract and am now doing the final bits of work. I also started working on my poster, which I'm doing in hot pink Hrvoje said, when I asked how it looked, "It's very girly." And I agree, but believe that it's okay since I'm a girl.

So in other news, My last day in the office, Friday the 19th, we're having a little potluck. I'm making chili in my rice cooker, cornbread, and macaroons. If you've never had a macaroon, you haven't lived. But anyway, Mallory is making hummus and bringing in veggies and pita bread to dip with, and I'm not sure what Surya is bringing. There's a new girl, a German exchange student who is doing the same sort of thing that we did (an internship through some German company) and she's bringing drinks. We're going to try to get Hrvoje to come too, because we're pretty sure that he'll make something delicious. But we'll see how that goes.

The Sunday before I leave I'll be doing my souvenir shopping for the people who demand Australian goodies from back home. There's this really cute market place in the suburb that I'll be staying in my last week, and they have a lot of cool things. So I'll be doing that.

All in all, I'm happy to have gone here, but I'm so excited to be going home soon. I didn't think I'd miss it as much as I do, and I really miss eating decently. I'm really sick of ramen. My roommate scolded me yesterday for not adding any veggies to my ramen, because it "isn't healthy". Ah well.

Alright, that's it for now!

August 3rd, 2011

So after a long hard battle of perfecting my abstract, sending it, resending it, reperfecting it, over and over, I finally submitted it. It was very close to the 3500 character limit. I'm almost surprised it didn't go over. Anyway, now I don't really feel like doing anything for the rest of the day... Even though I still have mounds of stuff to do.

So yeah, all set for San Francisco and AGU in December! Woo!

July 31st, 2011

Oh boy, there's so much going on! There are 3 weeks left, and the AGU abstract is due in what, 3 days? ....I feel like this summer has totally flown by me and I missed it entirely.

3 weeks left means I need to get on things. I have so much left to do! I have no idea if I'll be able to finish it in time, but I sure am going to try.

I have to move out of my apartment in 2 weeks as the owner of the room I'm renting is coming back, and I'll be staying at a bed and breakfast. I'm kind of excited, for one week it might seem like I'm actually on a working vacation. It'll be nice, I hope.

That's it for now, yeah, just wish me luck, will you?

July 25th, 2011

So one of the things Hrvoje asked me to do was record sections of my PcP-P traces. After a long hard battle with GMT and C Shell, I was able to make one for each event and they came out nice. Here's one:

This is the best PcP-P event I found, and it was cool because it was in the Mediterranean, which Hrvoje's data set didn't include much of. So I lucked out!

Next stop: P and PcP ray paths through tomographic models!

July 23rd, 2011

So I went in to work today to get some things done. I think I must socialize with my office mates more than I realized, because I got far more done when they weren't there! But, anyway, I finished my PcP-P measurements for all 27 events, 3 of which were total crap, but my goal was to get at least 10 decent events. It turned out that my criteria for picking events in hopes of finding good PcP was very good. Anyway, I finished the measurements, wrote a program that organized them all based on the quality of the measurement, and created ps files for all of the Grade 1 and 2 measurements. Hrvoje wants me to print them out, which disturbs me slightly because it's so much wasted paper! But still, I'll get over it. After that, I took my measurements from each event and plotted them all into ps files, to show which events were the best, which ones sucked, etc. Then, I took all of the data and plotted it all onto a map, first which just Grade 1 quality measurements and then with Grade 1 and 2. AFTER THAT.... I wrote another GMT script to plot my PcP-P residuals with Hrvoje's. Here's what I have:

These are Hrvoje's events from his 2002 data set. I used Adobe illustrator to show the major holes in the data so that I could see if I had achieved my goal of having helped fill in the holes.

Then, I plotted my events using the same holes, to see where I had filled in:

Then I showed the holes that still need to be filled in:

So yeah, that's what I did on my Saturday. 😊

July 21st, 2011

So this past week has been difficult. I've been sick for the last two, and I haven't gotten much opportunity to sit back and enjoy the stuff that's going on, but things are getting better. Here's the update:

• I've been falling behind, I guess, without realizing it. There's a lot to do, and I guess I'm not doing it fast enough. So I'm trying to "pick" up the pace (har har puns). I finished the PcP-P events yesterday, all 27, and today I had a big scare, because my script didn't work right. and didn't save my measurements to the right files. I almost had to do everything over again, but with some magic and C Shell I was able to append my table and now I have all 800 measurements neatly organized into a table. Lucky me.
• My next job is to finish the script I wrote to weed out bad quality measurements and organize them into specific directories. My script is currently in its "almost done just needs some tweaking" phase, and then I'll be good to go. I am also starting to plot my record sections using GMT as well as plotting P and PcP ray paths through a tomographic model. I believe I'll be using Ritsema's script, and that should help immensely.
• I went to an interesting seminar last week, about the geo dynamo and using ancient volcanic eruptions to show the excursions between pole reversals. It was done by Brad Singer from the University of Wisconsin, and has given me an idea to look into his research and school for Grad School... Also, the talk today was done by Brian Kennett and though it wasn't entirely technical, it was interesting. He was talking a lot about the Boxing day earthquake in 2004 and the Japan earthquake in 2011, and how where the earthquake occurs in subduction zones makes a huge difference in how the earthquake will "act". He explained how the 2004 earthquake sort of acted like falling blocks, how the first quake caused more places along the zone to release their stress and that's partly why it was so destructive. All of this interpretation might be wrong, but that's what I got out of it.
• I went to this delicious ice cream parlor that's meant to be an American food place that isn't McDonalds and it had hotdogs and ice cream. I got a banana split, and it was delicious. Also, after buying a rice cooker, I am much better off food wise, as a 5$ bag of rice is lasting me a week or so for lunch and dinner. Yum.
• I am slowly realizing that a month from tomorrow I'll be heading home. I'm missing the states terribly and I'm really excited. Although it's super fun here, I can't wait to be back. I just hope I'll be able to finish everything in time, and I think if I work hard and work some Saturdays I should be fine.
• I've read 20 books so far this summer, which is more than I've ever had the opportunity to read in such a short time. I do think, however, that I need to read the seismology book instead of my novels, but I'm loving them too much! haha

That's all I have for now. Once I start plotting more I'll post some pictures for you all to see 😊

Bye!

July 13th, 2011

This is the map of events. The red stars indicate all of the events from 2001-2009 that satisfy my criteria of occurring <80km and have at least a 5.8 body magnitude. The blue stars are the events previously done by Hrvoje prior to 2001 which satisfy my criteria and the yellow stars are Hrvoje's events that do not. The Green diamonds are the events I chose to do. In total, there are 27 of them.

The next picture is a map of the stations of my best event thus far. It took place in the Mediterranean. The stations are marked as green triangles and the reflection points are marked with circles or triangles, depending on the residual. The residual is calculated by subracting the predicted PcP-P from the observed PcP-P. If a residual is negative, it means that the PcP wave was fast or the P wave was slow, and if it is positive, it means that the PcP was slow or the P wave was fast.

Woo GMT!

Here's the revised picture, I took Rob's advice to change the color of the symbols. I intend on comparing it to the tomographic model when I finish my measurements.

July 7th, 2011

So this week has been productive and good. I've been kind of sick from my trip to Sydney, but I have been getting a lot done. After finishing four events looking at PcP, I used a neat C Shell script I wrote to automatically write out my table of measurements. I then used awk printf to align everything right so that the table looks neat . I know that isn't exactly important, but I guess it just allows me to be proud of it when I print it out.

I then wrote a little bit of a rough draft of an "abstract" for my project. I did it so that I could practice talking about my project so that I could actually say I know what it is I'm doing, and Hrvoje also wanted a sample of my scientific writing for the rubric thing. It seems okay, it definitely needs work and expansion, but I think that it is a good start. It's posted as my "profile" project description, just in case any of you want to give me any tips 😊

So now that it's Friday I'm pretty worn out from the week. I need to finish my 5th event today and maybe a sixth, but so far I'm procrastinating. I'm exhausted, despite going to bed at 9pm.

On a very happy note, I got a care package from my family which included the essentials, like ramen, easy mac, and some shampoo and conditioner. However, they also included some tiny boxes of cereal and my favorite flavor of oatmeal 😊 It was definitely the best thing I've come home to since coming here!

So Harry Potter is coming out on July 13 at 12:01 AM, and I'm wondering really which day that is. Because obviously. technically, that will be like Tuesday night, but it might not be... meh... I'm confused. I'm going to ask somebody I think haha.

So another note on the project, my first event showed decent PcP, my second event showed excellent PcP, my third event was okay, but the fourth event showed nothing. So I'm hoping the 5th will yield better results and that I will find the 10-15 events necessary to have a successful project. Out of the 27 I chose to look at, I'm hoping that at least 10 turn out decent, but I would be happy to see 15 of them. So far I'm thinking that 3/4 events have been good, so hopefully the trend will continue!

So that's about all I have 😛 I'll post more when I know more.

July 4th, 2011

So I've been doing multitudes of PcP-P measurements. I haven't gotten THAT far, however 2 events that I chose to do that took place in the Mediterranean, have so far produced excellent PcP!

I'm really excited about it, and I'm hoping that the other events give me just as nice wave forms. I'm sure you all know that feeling of elation when waves which are supposed to align perfectly do 😊 😊 So happy.

So Yeah that's my quick update!

July 3rd, 2011

Sydney this weekend was pretty cool. I walked around quite a lot and soaked in the sights and tourist traps, which made it a lot of fun. Specifically, Manly Beach was lovely. There were a lot of cool things to see and shops to browse at. Although, I went into a shop near Darling Harbour and knocked down and nearly broke about 300$ worth of Aborginal pottery. Luckily none of it broke.

But anyway, it was fun, and I figured I'd leave this picture. This little guy flew to join me while I was eating lunch, supposedly "The Best Meat Pies in Sydney!".

He seemed a little skeptical too.

June 28th, 2011

So, the meeting Tuesday did go well, and we decided to use a hp filter of 1 and in some cases 1.1 on some of the SAC files. So this is all good. I also picked 27 events that I will look at, and all but 3 satisfy the criteria of a.) having a depth > 80 and b.) having a body magnitude greater than 5.8. I picked 3 others that were in interesting places so I could see a more global spread of PcP-P. Many of my events are in Kamchatka and just north of Antarctica, in order to get the right parts of the CMB.

Anyway, so I was given Friday off because Hrvoje is going to a conference in Melbourne for a week, so I decided I'm going to Sydney this weekend. I'm excited, and a little nervous, because if I can't find someone to go with I'll be alone. I'm hoping one of my new friends will be game!

Aside from this, all I can say is that in my meeting today I had the best conversation about how much of our "knowlege" of the compositions of other planets is all speculation. It excited me that something I'm really interested in has so much work to be done. Although, in order to know more about other planets we first really need to learn what the heck's going on in our interior, so here's to working on that!

😊 😊 😊

June 23rd, 2011

So every week I have two meetings with Hrvoje. Tuesday, this is how my meeting went, in summary: "Yes, well, good, but it's all wrong." So, pretty much, I had to redo EVERYTHING.... And do some other things I wasn't convinced I could do.

But now it's Friday, almost time for my 2nd weekly meeting, and I'm feeling confident. I have printed record sections of my PcP waves as well as a really colorful and pretty map of the world with red stars indicating possible events from 2001-2009 that fit my criteria of a.) being a deep event and b.) have a body magnitude of 5.8 and above. The map also has stars plotting the events that hrvoje used in his data set from before 2001. When I figure out how (right now all I have is this tiny textbox and my pro-skills in html coding to make this pretty) I will post the map. It's pretty, and what's better than that?

Anyway, I am hoping this meeting goes better than last weeks, although I'm convinced it will. Things are going much smoother now that I'm learning how to code in C Shell and now that I can make working SAC macros.

A side note: When trying to determine the possible events that I could use, the original approach was to go through them one by one using WILBUR, but then I thought using GMT (if only I could figure out how!) to plot them using the EHB catalog. Mallory, the PhD student who is working on about the same thing helped me do it, and then mentioned that she hadn't thought of doing that, and has been doing it the long hard way for a long time, and she was as excited as I was. So I felt good about that!

Aside from the sciencey crap, socially it's gotten a lot easier around here. I made a few friends in town, and now that I know people I don't have to adventure alone. Although 2 of these friends tried to trick me into believing in "drop bears". Drop Bears are apparently an imaginary deadly animal that Aussie's like to tell dumb Americans about, because usually they believe them. Luckily, on both occasions, I not only didn't believe it, but I told them that I "don't get the joke". So ha!

Also, the animals here are amazing. The birds amaze me, because a lot of them are pets in the US. Expensive pets, at that! Cockatoos and parrots, flock all over the place! It's really crazy. I was told that there are like, tons of rabbits everywhere, as they are an invasive species, but I have yet to see one. Kangaroos, though, live right up the street from me, so I usually see them hopping around.

Another note of awesomeness: Harry Potter 7 Part 2 comes out here first, and since my friends are apart of the campus Harry Potter club, which rented out the theater for the midnight release, I might be able to snag a ticket! Ahhh so excited!

We went to this amazing Indian restaurant last night, and got the "banquet" option, and I ate, and was full, and then they brought out the main course. I was sooooo full afterward.

What else... Oh, there was a fire in Canberra yesterday, and the smoke has spread all over the suburbs. You can't really see the sun today, the smoke is that thick, but also the building that was on fire is still smoldering as of this morning.

That's all I have to report!

June 16th, 2011

Alright, so I have accomplished the mini-project that Hrvoje asked me to do. This was so helpful because it was to get me to learn how to use the scripts and software that I need to use in order to do my project. It's so exciting! If my computer would let me, I would post a picture of what I did, but I can't so I'll have to do it some other way.

However, even though I figured this stuff out, I have so much more to learn before I can really do my project stuff. But this is still super exciting! Yay!

June 15th, 2011

So I found this website that might help some people, it helped me, I was going to put it in the dicussion forum but it won't let me. Not sure why, but here it is: [url=http://geophysics.eas.gatech.edu/classes/SAC/]http://geophysics.eas.gatech.edu/classes/SAC/[/url] KBAI

June 15th, 2011

So this week has not been one of my most productive, but it's been okay. I've been working on using the software and scripts that I was given, and so far so good. The only problem is that I have a sort of "test" in that I have to redo a graphic that Hrvoje had done using data from IRIS and SAC. I'm afraid right now I don't really know how to do it... But I'm confident eventually I'll figure it out. Thursdays we have these seminars at 4pm in the RSES conference room. Hrvoje said I should go to them, specifically one next week on the Earth's core, so I'm going to go to this week's as well, to know what to expect. I was told by a PhD student that it's usually something that doesn't have to do with seismology and is incomprehensible to anyone not in the field the talk is supposed to be about. I guess I'll find out, but I'm still kind of dreading, at least today's, talk. On a personal note, I've gotten an addiction to two things in Australia. First thing, their Pink Lady apples are the most delicious apples I've ever tasted. My other addiction is reading. Since going to college, it's been hard to find time to read, but I have so much time this summer outside of researching that I just can't stop. Haven't been sleeping a whole lot because I can't put my Nook down. I guess it isn't the worst addiction, but it's kind of bad because I keep doing it instead of sleeping, and it's making me obscenely tired. So tonight my goal is to go to bed before or at 10, and leave the book for tomorrow, because now that I'm up to 4 books in 4 days, I don't think it's a healthy record to add a fifth to those numbers. Uhhhm... computer issues, interesting ones. Yesterday the network was down because someone filled up the home directory. IT couldn't really figure it out, and apparently they figured it out after I had left to go home. Apparently, Hrvoje got an email, and a 1 mb attachment, or smaller, but this attachment was replicating itself millions and millions of times inside the directory. Which is the complete weirdest thing I've ever heard, but I guess they deleted it, and 5 minutes later it was back and 54GB bigger. It's crazy, and I can't think of a reason that would happen. I think that's it for now. I might post another blog tomorrow as a better summary of what I accomplished, but right now this is all I have. Bye!

June 9th, 2011

I've already made a mess of things, like all physicists do....

So the first day went smoothly. I met a couple people working in the same office as I am, specifically Mallory, who is from the states, and (A name I can't pronounce or spell at the moment) who spends every waking second of his at his computer working on his PhD. Things went well, my project is somewhat planned out, I started some reading and when I got bored I played with the linux and when I got bored of that.... I secretly played a little solitaire. But all in all, a really decent day.

BUT. Then came Thursday. I got up at 6AM, left the house at 7AM, and did not get to the building until... oh... I don't know 10:15. First, I got on the wrong bus and it brought me to the southern edge of Canberra in a suburb I can't pronounce (Tuggeranong?) and then jumped on a bus back to the city. Then couldn't find a bus that brought me close enough to my building... So I ended up on the complete wrong side of campus and I forgot my map book on my desk the day before.... UGH!

So then I got there. People were cool. In fact no one cared. But then I went to log in.... and... well... the computer froze.... So we restarted it? ....nothing. So then the IT guy came up, sat on it for about an hour, and at that point I said screw it and went to lunch. I got back, no IT guy, no working computer, no anything. Mallory told me to just print out some papers to read at home.

So I went home. Well, went shopping while in the city but then went home and sulked. So now here I am, a little annoyed but otherwise okay, and I'm going to try and read those papers.

But here's some important things regarding my project. Mallory has a bunch of scripts that will help me with the mapping and data analysis, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel so to speak. I just learned how to request data through Iris, and hopefully will be able to figure out how to use it.

My computer while it was working. His name is Moho.

So... aside from seeing my first kangaroo, this is all I really have to report.

Bye!

June 4th, 2011

So it's been a week of fun and crazy things I never thought I'd do. I never thought I'd make it through the 8 mile hike, but I did it. And I think that it will help me demonstrate fortitude and perserverence throughout the summer. I'm really nervous about meeting my host, and getting to know my housemates. I'm hoping people there are as awesome as they were here! I already miss everyone. We had a lot of fun staying up way later than we should (or wanted to, for that matter!).

It was so wonderful getting to know all of my fellow interns, and by the end of last night it was obvious that the AGU alumni reunion thingy will be off the hook!

Just curious to those of you who reading this have met your hosts, how are they in relation to what you expected them to be?

K now to finish packing!

June 3rd, 2011

• Become proficient in MATLAB
• Learn how to be a better learner
• Accept what I can do and what I cannot do, and try to expand what I'm capable of
• Learn how to better manage my time
• Make friends
• Learn how to live completely on my own
• Learn a bit of geology 😛
• Become a better scientist
• Learn a little Mandarin
• Explore and have fun in a drastically new environment
• Not touch the thermostat ever (Seriously, never again)
• Save money to buy a car when I come back

These are all goals I think I can accomplish if I work at them. I'm sure that there will be more and more that I'll need to add to this list once I find out more of what I'll be doing.