Technical Reports and Papers from my work. Message boards: Muon1 Project Forum Software here General/Rubbish Discuss things. Miscellaneous: Black hole images Obtained by tracing photons through curved space, done during my final degree year at Oxford. |
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Browser Wars 4-in-a-row where your team is your browser Colunms Cubular matching. Tubetris Cylindrical Tetrominoes. NCGi website An incomplete Asteroids game! | ||||||
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2026-Jun-01 00:00:37 Ah! You can see the #rocket #explode multiple times in HD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7yNQuNSGBw |
2026-May-31 21:43:48 A red rose in front of my house, a multiflora rose climbing up a tree and a wild white rose on the bluffs near the beach.
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2026-May-31 19:46:42 Walmart #drone deliveries hit 1 million.
https://dronexl.co/2026/05/31/walmart-1m-drone-deliveries-40/ |
2026-May-31 17:48:20 Suspicious about its environment. |
2026-May-31 17:46:54 Ruffled. |
2026-May-31 17:45:39 The cheese has gone. |
2026-May-31 17:38:38 Remember to always eat your cheese in a safe place. |
2026-May-31 17:36:05 Cheese. |
2026-May-30 20:28:36 Geese.
RT https://x.com/ChihiroMacavity/status/2060817769646727672 |
2026-May-30 17:56:19 This mow lawning was quite long grass because I'd been away for almost two weeks. |
2026-May-30 17:18:40 Mow LAWNED. 🚜 |
2026-May-29 23:32:53 More adventures with my Kooforway P8.
Decided to use it for a serious work trip. Given it has 1TB of storage and 12GB RAM, it's pretty capable, so I got Office, LatEx, a VPN thingy, C compiler, Zoom installed. My presentation on Powerpoint via Zoom worked flawlessly even with videos. So I'd say this experiment is a success. However, the odd arrangement of the symbolic keys still makes it hard to program fast. |
2026-May-29 23:27:17 Rocket test cause explosom of rocket. [video] #space #BlueOrigin #YesItsBlueOriginsRocketThatsExplodingThisTime
RT https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/2060164928472854821 |
2026-May-27 21:03:24 I think these might be the "giant rabbits" I was seeing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_hare |
2026-May-27 17:23:00 ITER tokamak is more than half-way complete. #physics #fusion [photo]
RT https://x.com/iterorg/status/2059651384874565805 |
2026-May-26 19:51:08 There are giant rabbits here. |
2026-May-26 09:48:23 On the GANIL facility tour last Friday I saw a separated sector #cyclotron (too big for the frame but you can see one sector's magnet in green) and a beamline where they were trying to make super-heavy elements by colliding a mid-mass ion beam with heavy element target.
#accelerators #physics
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2026-May-26 09:39:04 I was at the European Spallation Source today giving a seminar on the CEBAF 22GeV recirculating linac upgrade with permanent magnets.
https://stephenbrooks.org/ap/report/2026-7/Brooks_ESSseminar_CEBAFupgrade.pptx #physics #accelerators
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2026-May-24 16:51:05 Time for BIG TREE. |
2026-May-24 16:24:57 It's unseasonably warm, if anything. |
2026-May-24 16:16:29 Went to see a castle in Southern Sweden today.
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2026-May-23 19:14:37 Wi-fi password is in the hotel information, but the hotel information is on the web 🕸️ only. I had to deduce the password using clues. |
2026-May-23 13:21:21 Rocket results. #SpaceX
https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-12 |
2026-May-23 13:20:34 This airport terminal has a population of tiny birds. |
2026-May-23 06:40:37 Went on a tour of the GANIL ion cyclotron facility yesterday. Do you prefer the 1980s control panel for the cyclotrons or the 2010s one for the superconducting linac? #physics #accelerators
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2026-May-21 22:57:15 Propellant is loading for #Starship flight 12. Just over 30mins to go. #SpaceX [live]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBu6JFjt0tk |
2026-May-21 22:24:08 Recommended for conferences in France.
RT https://x.com/SugitaKei/status/2057521674925351019 |
2026-May-21 07:12:48 This afternoon in the #IPAC26 poster session I'm controlling six beams that behave differently in the same beam pipe, going through the same magnets. If this is possible it could save costs for the Jefferson Lab 22GeV energy upgrade.
https://stephenbrooks.org/ap/report/2026-5/CEBAF_matching_poster.pdf I'll be in baguette area BC14, ask about anything you like. #IPAC2026 #physics #accelerators |
2026-May-20 21:06:55 I decided to go on a work trip with my KooForWay P8.
Pros: lots of storage - 1TB on mine - so I can install office and everything I need for work. Reasonable performance provided Windows 11 isn't trying to install updates. Cons: keyboard is tiny and nonstandard *especially* the symbols that I use a lot. Windows touchscreen interface is sometimes nice but sometimes just broken in particular apps, feels like it was made by 5 different teams in different decades. Additional obvious pros: It is tiny and looks cool. It has a headphone jack. Battery is 5 hours ish, maybe more. It fits in my bag easily and can be opened in an economy plane seat even when the person in front reclines. #computing #laptop #netbook |
2026-May-20 08:29:18 My poster on simulating crystalline ion beams in the BNL Booster accelerator is in the "baguette" area this afternoon, although if you're not in France you can see it below!
https://stephenbrooks.org/ap/report/2026-6/crystalline_booster_poster.pdf #accelerators #physics #IPAC26 #IPAC2026 |
2026-May-19 10:14:52 Fermilab are presenting their plans at #IPAC26.
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2026-May-18 12:00:27 The beach at Deauville is quite deep, you can only faintly hear the sea from the inner parts. |
2026-May-18 01:52:57 I'm at the #IPAC26 Particle #Accelerator Conference this week. Will be giving a talk Wednesday morning at 9:50am in the Hadron Accelerators session. I have posters Weds (baguette BA07,08) and Thurs (baguette BC14) and will be at most of the evening events, so come and say hi! #physics
https://www.ipac26.org/ |
2026-May-16 17:59:30 Optimal packings of 2D shapes in other shapes. #maths #geometry
https://erich-friedman.github.io/packing/index.html |
2026-May-16 00:38:13 Getting soaked by the #Starship pad deluge system. #SpaceX [video]
https://x.com/_MaxQ_/status/2055348040475517036 https://x.com/RoughRidersShow/status/2055357538963427509 |
2026-May-14 23:19:19 End of a #tunnel as cut by a boring machine. [photo]
RT https://x.com/boringcompany/status/2055018435919396958 |
2026-May-14 22:33:53 I set the ion trap oven to 30, 50, 100, 150 and 200C using data read from the thermocouple. At the current 40W power level (and in air rather than vacuum), it tops out at 220C. The cartridge heater is actually rated to 250W with a higher voltage, which might get me closer to the range where calcium starts to give off vapour. The chart below shows an hour in total with 1 minute grid. #physics
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2026-May-14 01:47:41 Deer ate the buds off my rose plant. |
2026-May-13 23:40:20 So I was trying to install Powerpoint on a new laptop and found the recommended URL or app store item would only download copilot. I had to ask copilot for the correct URL to find the ACTUAL Office installer. This is now the second time I've had Microsoft's AI apologising for Microsoft's incompetence. |
2026-May-13 15:36:44 There are a family of stable solutions for putting a crystalline beam in Brookhaven National Laboratory's Booster accelerator, because angular momentum about the vertical axis can be freely chosen within a range. The videos below show this for several different values, the top six of which stay at a low temperature (<20mK). Changing how fast the bunch spins actually changes its shape as shown in the vertical plots afterwards.
It would have been nice to make the angular momentum in the drift sections zero, as in the bottom-right plot, as this would make laser cooling easier to achieve, but this is right at the edge of the stable parameters and heats (as well as being such a flat bunch it is almost two dimensional). You can also see particle diffusion over many turns, since this is still slightly in the liquid state. Needs to be roughly half the temperature to be fully solid. But still an ultra-cold beam by most definitions! #physics #accelerators |
2026-May-12 22:36:57 Still using #Linux. At least at home. I have to keep reminding myself of this fact (browser works the same and a lot of programs are cross-platform). Development is a breeze too. I've been using it for nearly 6 months. |
2026-May-11 23:08:53 I started the day worried I hadn't made any slides for a presentation but by the end of the day I have too many slides. |
2026-May-10 20:30:10 Google thinks it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnosporangium_juniperi-virginianae |
2026-May-10 20:29:52 The conifer tree in my garden has these strange star-shaped growths made of jelly.
There's also the same thing going into the trunk.
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2026-May-09 23:30:25 Went for a walk, forecast said light rain, but the last 5 minutes before I got back wasn't light! |
2026-May-09 17:09:55 #Starship version 3 is fully stacked for the first time. #SpaceX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhJRzQsLZGg |
2026-May-08 23:11:38 It may not look like much, but I've managed to power on the heater for the calcium gas source of my ion trap and read back the temperature changes using a thermocouple. Below are two pulses that stopped when it hit 1mV and 1.5mV (about 25K and 38K above ambient). The X-axis is seconds so you can see the thermal heating and cooling times. Using this I'll be able to make a closed loop thermostat for it. #physics
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2026-May-08 00:03:22 #UK local council election votes being counted. #politics
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1428pev1n0t |
2026-May-07 23:49:30 Today I had to load an 800MB CSV file to analyse optimisation logs that eventually produced the animation earlier. I found atof and strtod are both about 10-20x slower compared to a simple string-to-double function I wrote. I also started to optimise CSV loading (hint: you don't need to store every string in its own memory block if you replace the commas by 0x00 bytes). #programming |
2026-May-07 22:45:27 Some video of the FAIR #accelerator under construction. #physics
RT https://helmholtz.social/@FAIR_GSI_de/116527623332671136 |
2026-May-07 22:10:28 #SpaceX fired the boooster again, this time for ~12 seconds. [video] The first video is slowed down I think.
RT https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2052499098347979156 |
2026-May-07 19:16:25 I have a 40-variable optimisation problem that seems to have a lot of local minima. One of the simplest ways to explore them was to drop a load of optimisations from different starting points and run them downhill, which is what you see in the video below. Vertical is error score (in this case, the degree of mismatch of some particle beams), and horizontal is radius of the parameter vector away from the origin (in this case, related to magnet power consumption). I'm using radius because I don't have 40 horizontal axes for each dimension, but you can see some features already, with points on the bottom left being particularly good, and there's a radius beyond which things get worse again. #optimisation #physics |
2026-May-06 23:15:39 Resonant system of six #planets. #space #astronomy #astrophysics #physics
Orbital periods are in a 1 : 1.5 : 2.25 : 3.375 : 4.5 : 6 ratio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_110067#/media/File:StarHD110067PlanetarySystem-20231130.jpg |
2026-May-06 00:48:45 Big Rabbit was in my parking space as I got home. |
2026-May-05 22:49:14 The First Simple Symmetric 11-Venn Diagram
#maths #geometry https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.6452 |
2026-May-05 21:55:30 #Mars rover gets 28lb rock stuck on the end of its drill. #NASA #space [video]
RT https://x.com/NASAMars/status/2051756612440973410 |
2026-May-05 18:35:49 Here's what it looks like from the side. The ring plane is vertical for uh reasons. |
2026-May-05 18:08:41 When I said the crystalline beam simulated in the BNL booster was a "slightly-molten liquid" like tar or molasses, I realised that probably needs a video to show what's going on. I coloured the ions by initial horizontal position and then show the dynamics of one turn (with 36 dipole magnets) and then the first hundred+ turns. The bunch rotates by 0.495 times for each turn, which is weird (normal beams are once per turn). But also if you jump two turns at a time, diffusion of particles between the quadrants is visible.
#accelerators #physics I think you can see some of the yellow particles at the end doing Brownian motion (in the blue area). |
2026-May-04 20:37:53 I just finished writing a paper about crystalline beams where the bunch heats at a rate of 0.529K/s. I also tweaked a parameter slightly, ran a simulation over the weekend and got one that heats at only 0.272K/s. Too late to change the paper now (I'd have to re-plot everything else!) Also, these simulations of 5500 turns in the #accelerator take 65 hours each, so not easy to scan parameters around to find the perfect spot. Having said that, maybe I could scan the magnet setting *during* the simulation and look for the flattest part of the temperature rise? #physics
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2026-May-03 17:52:39 Looks like one of the engines to pressurise the water for Starbase Pad 2's deluge exploded. [video] #SpaceX
RT https://x.com/TrackingTheSB/status/2050772642727141491 |
2026-May-03 00:47:57 Lawn is looking a bit better now the grass is growing and I've mowed it a couple of times. Multiple mowings seem to get rid of the dead leaves too. |
2026-May-02 03:00:05 Maybe it's _only_ starting Task Manager that powers off my work PC because I've been happily running simulations on the CPU and GPU. Doing a long simulation over this weekend, I'll see if it works. |
2026-May-02 01:06:03 I might have to try detecting charges in the 1fC - 1pC range. A suitable test source seems to be a sphere on an insulator charged up to a few volts. Then I touch it to the scope probe and see what I can detect. Then apparently I should add a "trans-impedance amplifier". Dunno if any of this will work but it's worth a try. #physics #electronics |
2026-May-01 23:24:37 The New Glenn fairing bends a lot when it re-enters, but it survives! #space [video]
RT https://x.com/davill/status/2050328439761379801 |
2026-May-01 17:17:59 Next #Starship flight (#12) could be as early as May 12th. #SpaceX
RT https://x.com/dpoddolphinpro/status/2050237415596372269 |
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