Browsing Archive: March, 2010

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the LHC

Posted by Chris Bird on Wednesday, March 31, 2010,
With the news that the Large Hadron Collider has started colliding particles, there has been a lot of mis-information flowing on the hazards of subatomic black holes and other dangers of high energy physics. This seems to be a combination of chicken-littles who love to panic, members of the media who love a scandal, and scientists who are too enamored of their own theories or experiments to give practical information on the LHC to the public.

Since I am also a trained physicist, let me say cle...
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My Grandmother's Funeral

Posted by Chris Bird on Saturday, March 20, 2010, In : Events 
I just got back from my grandmother's funeral, and from the celebrations of the family. (Photos of the event are posted at my facebook account.)

As I wrote before, my grandmother was 87 years old and suffering from many ailments. So although it is sad to see anyone in the family pass away, when they have had a full life and can no longer enjoy themselves it is perhaps a blessing for them to be released. 

 I was glad to see that the funeral was held as a celebration of life, and that the entire ...
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More Fun :(

Posted by Chris Bird on Friday, March 12, 2010, In : News 
I think the fates above decided that I didn't quite have a bad enough week yet, because two days ago they made my internet connection die on me. And then when I phoned the company for information, I encountered the more 'interesting' automated calling system I have ever heard of. 
 Since I have my internet with the same company that used to carry my cell phone, as soon as I phone them through my landline, their system assumes that I must want the cell phone department. And it doesn't give any ...
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My Grandmother's Death

Posted by Chris Bird on Monday, March 8, 2010, In : News 
I just got word this afternoon that my grandmother passed away this morning at 8:10am. 

She had been suffering with diabetes, dementia, and for a while a fractured hip. In the end it was renal failure that took her life at 87 years old.

The funeral should  be sometime this week, and after that is over with I will write more.

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The Best Laid Plans...

Posted by Chris Bird on Friday, March 5, 2010, In : News 
As some of you remember, about ten years ago I wrote a series of screensavers based on the chaos game methods of generating fractals. At the time they were very popular, and had tens of thousands of downloads. 

 Then in 2002 I got busy with other responsibilities and quit updating them,

Well, this weekend I finally seemed to have enough freetime to rewrite them using OpenGL so that they would work with the latest graphics processors. Or at least I thought I did...

Friday afternoon there was a po...

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About Me


Dr. Christopher S. Bird I am a physicist recently graduated from the University of Victoria, with a doctorate in theoretical physics. I also have training in mathematics, engineering and computer programming.

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