Technical Reports and Papers from my work. Message boards: Muon1 Project Forum Software here General/Rubbish Discuss things. Miscellaneous: Black hole images Made by raytracing light through curved space, produced during my final degree year at Oxford. |
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Browser Wars Connect-4 tournament by browser Colunms Cubular matching! Tubetris Cylindrical Tetris. NCGi website An incomplete Asteroids game. | ||||||
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2025-Nov-03 23:13:05 All the #rockets launched in 2025 (to scale). #space #SpaceX
https://www.flightatlas.org/ |
2025-Nov-01 22:16:05 A 2021 PC won't upgrade to Windows 11 but I'm plugging the new one into a monitor that says "Works with Windows Vista" and has a VGA port. Still works fine. |
2025-Nov-01 20:32:57 Looks like this rock split in two. 🪨
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2025-Oct-31 20:15:49 The workshop dinner had a nice venue on the North shore but we had heavy rain that evening and the car park filled with 3 inches of water.
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2025-Oct-31 20:11:40 Oak leaves going very deep shades of red here. 🌳
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2025-Oct-31 02:04:03 What's inside #Starship? And lunar landing info. #Moon #space #SpaceX
https://www.spacex.com/updates#moon-and-beyond |
2025-Oct-29 18:14:36 Today I presented a talk at COOL'25 workshop, including these simulations of a ring that can store a three-dimensional Coulomb crystal for 1/16 of a second, or more than 24000 turns. The crystal stays solid and bunched without cooling or RF. #accelerators #physics
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2025-Oct-26 18:35:47 Mushroom exhibition.
RT https://x.com/ChihiroMacavity/status/1982385277076484527 |
2025-Oct-26 18:03:08 #Trees going #autumn colours here.
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2025-Oct-26 00:17:34 12 chromosomes in common with squirrels.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0888754303001095 |
2025-Oct-25 23:29:24 Waking up in the middle of the night to get some water is OK, but it's spookier when you hear crunching from outside the window because there is a creature out there. |
2025-Oct-24 18:30:14 Will be going to the COOL'25 workshop on beam cooling at Stony Brook University next week. Looks like a very interesting set of talks: https://indico.jacow.org/event/98/timetable/#20251027.detailed
#accelerators #physics |
2025-Oct-24 18:25:57 Plot of how far #quantum computers have to improve before exceeding classical computers or breaking cryptography. #physics #computing
https://sam-jaques.appspot.com/quantum_landscape |
2025-Oct-23 23:47:59 This morning I saw several bees swarming around someone's Toyota. |
2025-Oct-23 22:44:22 Been tired with a sore throat and a few random aches and pains this week. Time to use my stock of honey/lemon/paracetamol (🐝🍋💊) hot drinks. They're already past their sell-by date. |
2025-Oct-23 22:41:48 How to turn AI stuff off in #Firefox.
RT https://mastodon.social/@AlSweigart/115423770913782844 |
2025-Oct-22 22:49:22 Cyber beds malfunction in AWS outage.
https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/aws-crash-causes-2000-smart-beds-to-overheat-and-get-stuck-upright-3272251/ |
2025-Oct-22 18:48:39 I made a picture of the cold bunch dynamical model while writing some slides. Just equations can be a bit dry! #physics #accelerators
https://stephenbrooks.org/ap/report/2025-9/model_order1_analytic.pdf
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2025-Oct-22 00:55:48 The good news is I'm making some good slides for my talk, the bad news is I have too many slides and need to organise some sort of knockout competition so only the best survive. |
2025-Oct-21 01:58:54 Expansion planned around my old lab in UK, via a Crown Estate land purchase.
https://www.bordertelegraph.com/news/national/25558337.crown-estate-eyes-expansion-harwell-science-hub-acquiring-land/ |
2025-Oct-20 23:47:49 - News freaking out about a comet
- "It's the only naked eye comet in 4 million years" - You can't see it - The only person who's seen it describes it as "an incredibly indistinct hazy blob, but it might have been a plane trail" - Media pictures of it are by the Hubble Space Telescope pointed at a different object |
2025-Oct-20 22:53:09 Yet yet yet another "encrypted" messaging app.
I will only trust these if I can view and send the cyphertext myself (base64 encoded or whatever) and I can verify it's doing the same algorithm as GPG or some other standard. Otherwise it will follow the usual lifecycle. Re: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1980207552404365526 |
2025-Oct-20 22:47:40 Liquid air could be another method of grid #energy storage.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251009-the-liquid-air-alternative-to-fossil-fuels |
2025-Oct-20 22:47:22 Drone defence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8zyyl81m3o |
2025-Oct-19 21:52:44 Removed a small dead tree trunk that was wedged at 45 degrees against the neighbour's fence. Took some twisting and pulling and cutting away vines. Helped that the wood had dried out so it was lighter. |
2025-Oct-18 22:14:55 Some #Starship variants for Moon landing and orbital fuel depot. #SpaceX #NASA
RT https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1979542069946552550 |
2025-Oct-18 18:46:40 Sudden periodic crashing sounds because my washing machine had an unbalanced load. |
2025-Oct-18 01:30:00 Bug found: I wrote code twice to do the same stuff, with the second version being less accurate. |
2025-Oct-17 23:14:20 That #physics bug I mentioned yesterday... I fixed it, and it didn't solve the problem I was observing. Still, at least I have the fix written down. The problem may be in a simpler bit of code I've been ignoring. |
2025-Oct-17 23:13:00 King to be first British monarch to pray with Pope in at least 500 years
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxkrn7jvexo |
2025-Oct-17 02:37:39 Today's bug: an electric field that moves is actually an electric AND a magnetic field. I didn't have that in this particular simulation, which is maybe why the result seemed physically wrong as the velocity increased. #physics |
2025-Oct-17 00:49:35 One of the earliest computers I did graphics programming on: https://bbcmic.ro/#%7B%22v%22%3A1%2C%22program%22%3A%22MODE%202%5CnGCOL%200%2CRND%287%29%5CnMOVE%20640%2C480%5CnDRAW%20RND%281280%29%2CRND%281024%29%5CnGOTO%2020%22%7D |
2025-Oct-15 22:49:11 Slightly closer view of the #Starship booster hovering above the ocean. #SpaceX
RT https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1978555639115715005 |
2025-Oct-15 22:43:33 But Windows, I thought you said there weren't any more updates?
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2025-Oct-15 19:44:42 Fixed some well-hidden simulation bugs. One was putting the magnetic gradient dB/dx where the magnetic field B should be. The other was using u^v to write vector cross product in C, but precedence means a+u^v evaluates as (a+u)^v, so I needed brackets! #physics #accelerators |
2025-Oct-14 19:54:43 Detailed #Starship Flight 11 landing videos. #SpaceX
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1978179844656480423 |
2025-Oct-14 15:13:15 Beam dynamics in #accelerators usually assumes your bunch has a finite temperature. But what if your bunch has zero temperature? This is the case for transporting ultra-low emittance bunches (Coulomb crystals) from ion traps. The usual "beta functions" don't really work, so I developed equations for the 3D fully-coupled dynamics in the note below. I'm hoping it can be used to do stability analysis (in 21 parameter space, so many ways it can go unstable!) #physics
https://stephenbrooks.org/ap/report/2025-9/model_order1_analytic.pdf |
2025-Oct-14 00:32:55 #Starship Flight 11 "landed" on the ocean seemingly as intended. #SpaceX [video]
RT https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1977895039318864296 |
2025-Oct-13 22:39:29 45mins to #Starship Flight 11 launch. #SpaceX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bcpnn_PO-A Dual-screening with the #SpaceX stream too: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-11 (for some reason their video player doesn't load in Firefox, but Microsoft Edge works). |
2025-Oct-12 17:31:20 "Grok, rewrite this in C"
😎 |
2025-Oct-12 17:13:08 #Software quality collapse.
https://techtrenches.substack.com/p/the-great-software-quality-collapse |
2025-Oct-11 21:56:48 Prank signs in Chelmsford.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crl5y255z6lo |
2025-Oct-11 17:52:40 Mowed the lawn. Only half the grass was long, but it was useful to break up leaves and other tree debris. |
2025-Oct-11 01:54:04 Incredibly complicated #gerbil colour diagram.
http://www.thegerbils.com/colors1.htm |
2025-Oct-11 00:39:10 Big pig seen outside French supermarket. [video]
RT https://x.com/RadioGenoa/status/1976635415533863336 |
2025-Oct-10 00:09:37 [video] Sighting of a Starlink satellite 'train' from orbit. #space
RT https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/1975689151467938057 |
2025-Oct-09 22:18:02 Bought a 2021 Mustang today.
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2025-Oct-07 21:45:25 The Acorn Archimedes A420/1 was the 2nd or 3rd computer I used. Look how fast it boots to the GUI! Also, look how good the GUI is given the number of pixels and colours it had to work with. #computing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvv06jKcMtE&t=3442 |
2025-Oct-06 23:33:30 My old car got towed away and I have a cheque for $800. |
2025-Oct-05 23:15:21 Trends in electric car sales: #energy
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8ex2l58en4o |
2025-Oct-05 22:19:17 Another calm day. |
2025-Oct-04 22:17:17 Rock pools. |
2025-Oct-04 22:16:09 Rocks.
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2025-Oct-04 22:15:53 Went to the beach this evening.
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2025-Oct-04 01:25:48 Despite it being 25+ years, I dreamt about my gerbils last night. The brown one stuck its nose through the bars and distracted me while the yellow one gnawed its way out of the plastic bottom corner of the cage. |
2025-Oct-03 22:23:33 There doesn't seem to be normal relish in the US so I put cocktail sauce (sweet tomato and Worcester sauce) with my pate on #toast. |
2025-Oct-03 00:45:00 Free-forming rogue #planet found accreting mass at high rate (roughly one Earth mass per 30,000 years).
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2516/ #astronomy #space |
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