Hail, erstwhile reader! I write to you at around 10pm, Saturday evening in what is the conclusion of (approximately) my second week in Seoul! While last week's theme was (in my head) "moving in", this weeks was certainly "spreading out". The apartment is starting to develop that nice "lived in" mess that makes me so cozy and at home. I've tried my hand at a few more adventurous dinners (you may have heard about my successful bibimbap, suggestions for the next meal are welcome) and I've begun to explore the city some more.
I've found a great Capoeira group, Cordao de Ouro in the city proper and have spent a few evenings since in their company. Very welcoming people, and it definitely beats watching Hulu and eating instant ramen. Also, several grad students made their thesis defense yesterday (Friday) both for their Master's and PhD. So afterward they invited me to join them at a small steakhouse. I admit that I did transgress on the vegetarian schtick and indulged in a little traditional Korean steak (imported from the US and Mexico, oddly enough), but the servings were small and I figured that the cow was already dead, so it probably wouldn't mind just this once. Though "this once" became twice, as the Astronomy Department held a bbq picnic for their alumni, and I just didn't feel right passing up on the famous Korean Barbecue. The food in Korea has been, overall, fantastic.
On the physics side I now have a project plan drawn up! I will be generating non-spinning wave forms of Black Hole Neutron Star binaries using the SpinTaylorT4 and/or TaylorF2 approximants, and then injecting them into some detector noise. Then I will be calculating a posterior (probability density function) around a handful of parameters that characterize the signal. I will be comparing the variance measured off of these to that predicted by an effective Fisher Matrix (a Fisher Matrix calculated around a Gaussian approximation of the posterior, instead of assuming the posterior is Gaussian itself) at 3-5 total binary masses, with a signal to noise ratio of around 20. On Monday I will be leaving Seoul to go to Busan for a week, where I will visit Prof. Hee Suk Cho at Busan National University in order to better understand the computational/coding side of things. Once that gets all cleared up I hope to begin work in earnest.
As usual I have one or two pictures to share from the week, so look for those above this post.
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