Tag Archives: english

March

Hey, I know, I know, it’s been a while since I wrote anything here, but I had no time to do it. Or maybe I just did not devote time for it… Anyway, lets see what happened in the last weeks. (I am watching the Ronde van Vlaanderen, so I have some time to write finally…)

First of all, I am working on my second article (it looks very interesting), while my first one is already out on paper in the April 2011 issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Also, when I was observing on La Palma in October, I discovered a new variable star (while monitoring a list of candidates, so it is not that special before you start asking), which turned out to be a rather interesting one, and resulted in a publication (a Letter in The Astrophysical Journal), on which I am the second author. And there are other ongoing collaborations, which will result in a co-authorships… Fulfilling the official requirements of the PhD won’t be a problem :) And to make things even better, my KEPLER Guest Observer Proposal was accepted, which means that I will have enough data for the rest of my PhD. And extremely good data! It happens once or twice in a while, that I think about what if I did not make the right choice when I went for being an astronomer (ok, this never happens while I am observing), but when I got the email about the acceptance, I became so happy, that I knew immediately from the feeling, that I am doing what I should do. Being happy always means that you are doing the right thing :)

As spring came into Belgium, flowers started to bloom, leaves started to grow on the trees, and I was finally able to leave the indoor trainer and go cycling outside again (but I will come back to this later). And besides cycling, we started to play soccer again (and after spending two hours sliding around the artificial grass field I decided to buy real soccer shoes for the first time in my life – and they are great). I made my travel arrangements for my upcoming observing run (and cycling holiday) on La Palma (in May), and for the CoRoT Symposium in Marseille (in June), and as my travel bag started to show serious signs of falling apart, I bought a TNF Base Camp Duffel (red, XL, capable of carrying 140 liters of gear, two years of all-around guarantee), which should serve me well in the following years, and survive even the rough handling of the airport staff of IBERIA :D And now I feel the urge to travel to the North, to Iceland or Scandinavia, and – among others – watch the northern lights.

To make myself useful, I assembled some IKEA furniture and helped a colleague/friend with doing electric assembly in his future house too on two days. Once we were there from 5 PM to 4 AM, but I really enjoyed it, because first of all it was something I have never done before, and on the other hand, I had some very good ideas (especially about arranging the cable-chaos into a nice order – as it can be seen above -, and about things which involve symmetry), and it was great to see them coming true (getting up the next morning was not that great, but we had fun, and that’s the important thing). Sometimes it is really relieving to do something different.

And now about cycling. As I have already told you, there was no need to ride on the indoor trainer this month, because the weather was generally (surprisingly for this time of the year) nice, dry and relatively warm. This – and being quite motivated – resulted in my best month on the racing bike ever (so since last year February) with 673 kilometers. Of course this is nothing exceptional even on an amateur level, but I am happy with it (given the conditions). As you can see on the picture above (notice the typical Flemish bricks and cobblestones :D), now I use my new aero wheels, and I also bought a 2cm longer stem (for better position), and a new saddle (a fi’zi:k Antares for comfort). The combination is pretty sweet, I expect some very good times coming up this season ;) I started working on a python script for automatically plotting my workouts along with providing detailed statistics (much more useful than the tools on Garmin Connect), but I will write about this later in a separate post. Very early into the season, I have already done a more than 200 km ride (to be precise, this was my longest ride ever, with 213 km), and just before the end of the month, I joined the K.U.Leuven University Cycling Team (it might sound serious, but it is far from that) for a training (which was pretty OK, I had no trouble keeping up with their pace, and I even felt strong in the last 20 km in pouring rain, and gave some really strong pulls for the team)… As there are some colleagues at the Institute who like cycling, we decided to participate in a 24 hour race during the summer, and to design our own AstroTeam cycling kit :) It will be very cool to ride in such a jersey on La Palma while working at the Observatory :D

Then, the month ended with a very nice evening – having dinner and watching a theatrical play (in English!!!) in the Stuk… Let’s see what April brings!

Riding the indoor trainer

So let’s suppose that you don’t want to stop training in the cold and wet winter months, but you have no access to a nice indoor velodrome. In this case, you can ride an indoor trainer. It is also the cheapest way to get to know the wattage levels you maintain while cycling…

Riding the indoor trainer is fun! It is warm and cosy inside, you don’t need to put on all your fancy cycling equipment, you don’t have to make sure that you take the matching jersey and the matching socks, you don’t have to clean your bike after every ride, you will never have a flat tire, nor a broken spoke, you can always stop if you really feel the need (and without searching for bushes or trees), you don’t have to carry all the food in your jersey, you will never get lost on the road, there will be no headwind, no sidewind, no rain, no snow, no burning sun, no wheel-suckers. Just you and the bike, and the wattage level on the display :) You can listen to music without blocking out all the noises (or you can even block the noise of the trainer without risking your life with the use of in ear noise cancellation earphones…), you can watch TV or a DVD (or a BD) meanwhile doing your exercise, and so on. You see, it is so much fun!

Riding the indoor trainer sucks… And it sucks a lot. It is boring. Very monotone. It is too warm inside, so you sweat and there is no wind evaporating it (some people tend to use a fan, but then think of the noise again…), hence after one hour there will be a nice little lake below you (or a completely wet towel on your handlebars). If you do interval training, then the electromagnetic brakes are so loud during the high intensity parts, that there is no way you could watch TV in the meantime without loosing track of what is happening on the screen. You lose the feeling of speed, because even if you are pedaling with 40 km/h, you will be standing still in your room, with no trees passing by, no whistling sound of the air around you, no weak cyclists passed and wheel-suckers dropped… Non cyclists also tend to think you are crazy… But again, did I already mention, that it was boring???

But in my opinion, riding is still better than not riding :) So keep rollin’!

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Riding the velodrome in Gent

In the cold and wet months during winter, it is really unpleasant to ride the road bike outside, so you are left with three choices: 1) stop training (but come on, for three months? no…), 2) ride the indoor trainer (I will cover this in the next post), or 3) switch to track cycling indoors. I have never ridden on a proper indoor track before, though I rode one of the oldest (but outdoor) velodromes of Europe in 2009, just before I left to Belgium. But riding indoors, on a shorter, steeper track with wooden surface is really different. That’s why we (myself, plus Tijl and Kristof – the same colleagues who joined me when I rode to catch the Tour de France last summer) decided to go for a ride in the Vlaams Wielercentrum Eddy Merckx in Gent. They have specific hours, when “recreational” cyclists can just go there, rent track bikes (fixed gear bicycles, with only one gear ratio and no brakes), and ride for two hours (15 €, everything included). We had fixed this Monday evening (8-10 PM) in our calendars already a month ago, so we were quite excited about the ride.

In one word, it was awesome. We got a 5 minute introduction about the rules of the track (Tijl translated for me), and then we were free to ride. Usually we just joined a group whose speed was comfortable for us, and rode with them for some time (as it is much faster and less tiring than riding alone, and it gives you the real feeling of the track). Of course we did some individual sprints too :) Unluckily, at the beginning, I had some problems with hydration levels and the amount – or lack – of food in my stomach, but I managed to overcome these for the second part of the ride. The best part – for me – was my last 35 minutes (you can see the beginning of it on the last scene of the video below), when I rode with a group which maintained a pace of 21-23 seconds / lap on the blue line (the length is 250 meters on the white line, so on the blue it is a bit longer). This gives an average speed of at least 42 km/h! During this time, I was in front twice (as the riders rotate, because the first one in the line always has to work much more, as he/she has to ride against the “wind”, while the rest is pedaling in the slipstream), and by the time it was my third turn, everyone else was dropped :) I also had my DSLR with me, so we shot some Full HD footage of the action too (all the three of us is visible, but you can easily spot me, just search for the same guy who is on the picture above):

After the ride, we had a beer (Keizer Karel Blond) – which is really typical for Belgians… You really can’t find a sports hall without a bar :D

26

I am one year older again. (Celebrating my birthday – or something like that -, tomorrow will be a holiday at K.U.Leuven…) Not a huge change, but being closer to thirty than twenty sounds a bit terrifying :D Anyway, what really matters is how old do you feel, and not how old you really are ;) Two weeks ago I (and Jonas, a colleague of mine) did some experiments with flashes in the dark corridors of the department, and one of the resulting portraits is shown above (a more conventional can be seen here). Just because the last portrait I had was already several years old…

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Neuhaus tidbits

First of all, I want to apologise, that the following pictures and descriptions may not be suitable for all audiences and may disturb some viewers. I have warned you… So, to cut the not so long story even shorter, I went to buy some “new” (which stands for ‘not yet tasted by me’) pieces of Neuhaus sweets on Saturday, with the cruel goal of photographing, tasting, and blogging about them…

I know, this is not really nice of me, but hate me if you want ;) You can always come to Belgium, and try these! Or if you live in Belgium, start your Monday in your local Neuhaus shop, and then I can guarantee you, that it will make this Monday much better, than an average, miserable first day of a usual week of work. But let’s write about the chocolate!

Neuhaus Manon Sucre Vanille

One of the very few pralines, which you can not buy as part of a big box of pralines, but you need to buy them separately, in small packs of five. One of the reasons behind this market strategy is that these are still hand made, and such, more exclusive. Or special, if you wish. And this is true for their taste too… The official description is as follows: Enjoy the richness of Madagascar vanilla butter cream, and the whole pecan nut and traditional nougatine piece decoration. Fork-dipped in vanilla confectioner’s sugar, this manon is a marvel of the confectioner’s knowledge and expertise. With my own words: it is just awesome. Smooth, rich, fresh, and complex taste, which makes it very difficult to stop eating all the five pieces immediately :) My personal record (for the longest time from the 1st to the 5th) is a half day… This is now my favorite praline along with the Séduction (also from the same company). Downside: very expensive :(

Rating: 5* (outstanding)
Price: 8.5 € / 5 piece

Neuhaus Raspberry Tablet

Now let’s move on to the special “Tablet” collection of Neuhaus. These are “normal” 100 gram tablets with or without some extra component added to them. In this case, the official description is this: For dark chocolate lovers Neuhaus has created another summer flavour: dark chocolate (56 %) with real oven-dried raspberries. Thanks to the slow drying process, the raspberries have obtained their full flavour. A pure and intense taste thanks to the bitterness of the dark chocolate combined with the fruity aspect of raspberries. And what can I add to this: that it is indeed true. I don’t like plain dark chocolate, only if it is combined with fruits. In this tablet, the harmony is perfect. Still, I suggest it for the dark chocolate lovers (or to those who are already fed up with pralines :D).

Rating: 4/5 (good/very good)
Price: 4.5 € / 100 g

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