Another summer, another Summer Eights bumps race on the Thames! This year, I rowed in the 2nd men’s boat and coxed the 3rd women’s boat. M2 bumped each of the four days, but our Friday bump was ruled invalid by the race authorities and a bump awarded against us instead. (Apparently, we bumped a bit too hard.) Still, we moved up through division 4. The W3 crew had a bit of a rougher time, being bumped on Thursday and Friday, but with very strong row-overs on the Wednesday and Saturday races. Saturday was particularly impressive, as the ladies recovered from a crab to hold off and ultimately pull away from what looked like an inevitable bump.
Wolfson’s flagship crews also did quite well this Eights, with the men holding their position of fourth on the river and the women bumping up to the head of division 2.
These pictures are courtesy my parents who were visiting for the race! Click for more!
The first week of May, I traveled with several lab-mates to Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain for the 2012 International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging. The conference had a fantastic array of talks, and I presented a paper on using a modified Hough transform to initialize a left ventricle myocardium segmentation in 3-d echocardiograms.
In Barcelona, we also got a little time to explore. We visited the Sagrada Família, saw quite a bit of Gaudí architecture, wandered in La Rambla, and enjoyed the Barceloneta beach.
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This spring, I took a quick trip back to the NIH to work out the details of my return to the NHLBI. While I was home, I also stopped by Duke to meet with a few of the MSTP advisors and visit with friends.
My brother (also a DukeMed student) was playing in his intramural basketball final on Coach K Court at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, one of the more famous American college basketball venues.
Back in the Washington DC area, I went with my parents to visit the National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center. The Center is a huge hanger on the grounds of Washington Dulles International Airport and holds an SR-71 Blackbird, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, the Enola Gay, and countless other aerospace treasures. From its early canvas airplanes to small satellites, advanced military and civillian craft, and some gems of general aviation, the museum was quite a place.
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A composite crew of Wolfson first and second boat men entered this year’s Head of the River Race. The regatta is a head race (ie time trial) over the Championship Course on the London Tideway. It is the same 6.8 km stretch used in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race (though raced in the opposite direction). The regatta attracts over 400 crews with a wide variety of experience levels, from the famed Leander Club, to various national teams (Czech Republic, Spain, Hungary, Switzerland, and Germany in the top 20), a number of University teams, and then the usual smattering of colleges and local clubs. Wolfson began the race in position 157, set by a very strong first boat crew last year, and finished at position 179 of 404.
Pictures courtesy JET Photographic. Click for one more.
Continuing our Oxford bumps racing exploits, Wolfson had a strong showing at Torpids 2012. I was rowing in the men’s first boat (M1) and coxing the women’s second boat (W2).
M1 bumped up the first three days, moving ahead of Oriel, St. John’s, and St. Catherine’s colleges. On the fourth and final day, we just missed the bump on Balliol by about 1/3 length, finishing 5th on the river overall.
The W2 crew also had a successful campaign, bumping up on Trinity W2 and St. Peter’s W1 in the first two days. On the Friday, we were bumped by Green Templeton W1, and on the Saturday were bumped by St. Peter’s W1 before going on to bump Hertford W2, moving up a net of 1 place on the river.
Most of these photos are courtesy Vaughan Dutton, one of the club’s premiere photographers. Click for more!
One fateful night in February, a huge (by UK standards) storm dumped several inches of snow on Oxford. Unable to contain our excitement, several small troupes of Wolfson students ventured out into the night to build snow-creatures of all descriptions. The next day, we returned to the great outdoors to get a glimpse of snow-covered Oxford before it all melted away.
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| Over the winter, I had the chance to visit the East Coast for a couple of lab meetings at NIH.
This also gave me the opportunity to catch up with friends and family and make a couple of quick stops in New York City and Philadelphia. |
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Click for a few NYC and Philly pictures…
This year’s search for a Christmas market resulted in a spontaneous train journey to Cardiff, Wales. The market, while not overly exciting, did have some delicious German sausages and mulled wine. The real treat of the day was Cardiff Castle, built as a Victorian mansion over a Norman castle over a Roman fort. We had perfect castling weather — light rain and strong gusting winds — that made leaning out of tower windows all the more exciting.
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Lavish, college-sponsored balls make up an age-old component of the Oxford social tradition. The oldest, richest colleges take it in turns to hold the Commemoration ball each summer. Many others hold their smaller events in the spring, showing off their grounds in Oxford’s most seasonable weather. Wolfson takes a bit of a different approach, and throws an annual Winter ball. This avoids competition with other colleges’ events, and livens up the social scene during what can otherwise be a dull spot on the calendar.
One perennial challenge of these balls is a ticketing system. Because tickets are relatively expensive, and food and drink inside the event are included, ball organizers face a challenge preventing people trying to “crash” the ball. This has lead to a bit of a cat-and-mouse game between ball organizers and those who would rather not pay. After simple tickets were forged, intricate wristbands were distributed in advance. As material science students began to duplicate those, individually numbered tickets were given out in before the event and traded for wristbands on the night, with the tickets marked on a master list with each exchange. While this method proved effective, it was frustrating for the hundreds of ballgoers in the queue waiting for one master list to be consulted for every entry.
For Wolfson’s 2011 ball, I was asked to create a unified ticketing system that would allow ticket purchase and tracking as well as a parallelizable entry system on the night. I was able to come up with an online sales system that integrated with Google Spreadsheets for easy manual modifications. An integrated ticketing system allowed any worker at the door to turn their phone into an effective ticket scanner. Read on for the full details.
