Discovery-related: NASA Discovery Step-1 proposals were due in February 2015. My colleagues and I were hard at work writing them for several months beforehand! It's fun to think up new space missions and how to achieve the best possible science within a limited budget. Here are some of the conference abstracts describing our efforts:
How much ice and carbon-rich material is really in all those dark ("low-albedo") asteroids? What meteorites might they be related to? Can we use a gamma-ray spectrometer on an asteroid orbiter to find out? Yes, we can.
Surprisingly, we still don't actually know where the moons of Mars came from. This mission will use a neutron spectrometer and a mass spectrometer to find out what kind of rock they are made of, which we don't know either.
I'm also working on the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission, which is the third mission in the NASA New Frontiers program. We're launching in 2016 and bringing our asteroid sample back in 2023. The flight hardware is being assembled now, so it's very exciting! Our PI has a blog which is probably the most accessible source of mission updates.
Other papers:
Elemental composition of 433 Eros: New calibration of the NEAR-Shoemaker XRS data
My adventures with Mac OS X Panther. From a Linux and emacs user's perspective.
Update (2005): Recovering all my OS X stuff after a hard drive mechanical failure. Backups are your friend. The problem, though, was that my stuff was backed up on a lot of different CDs and took a ridiculous amount of time to restore. After this I picked up a hard drive and external enclosure to make my life easier next time.
Update (2006): Setting up a new Intel Mac.
Using BibDesk to organize research papers.
Work in Progress: The Average Traveler's Guide to Gunung Mulu National Park.
Printing emacs buffers with color syntax highlighting from Emacs.app.
Useful Things I Have Learned About LaTeX
The Infamous Mac PDF Font Cache Bug (comes up when using LaTeX):
Detailed explanation and fix from TeX Users Group
$ atsutil server -shutdown
\setcounter{dbltopnumber}{2} % for 2-column pages
\renewcommand{\dbltopfraction}{0.9} %% fit big float above 2-col. text
2011: now with the second movement, courtesy of Lilypond and the transcription now available at the Mutopia Project
Viola part, movement 1, for B-flat clarinet (Andante): .pdf format
Viola part, movement 2, for B-flat clarinet (Menuetto/Trio): .pdf format and .pdf including the rehearsal letters from the Schirmer edition.
Viola part, movement 3, for B-flat clarinet (Allegretto): .pdf format
Viola part, movement 1, in treble clef (Andante): .pdf format
Viola part, movement 2, in treble clef (Menuetto/Trio): .pdf format, including Schirmer rehearsal letters
Viola part, movement 3, in treble clef (Allegretto): .pdf format
The parts may look pretty messy in a .pdf reader, but they should print fine. Gv also does a pretty good job of displaying them.
Clarinet part to quintet K. 452 in B-flat.
K. 452 clarinet part in concert pitch