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It is springtime, which means that it is finally time to get outside, get some exercise, and work off all of those wonderful winter fondues. The last couple of weeks have been beautiful here (high 50s!), so it has not been hard to motivate myself to get outside and go running. Further, I am motivated by the fact that on the 24th of April, I will again be competing in the 20km de Lausanne . Now, given that I would like to do much better this year than last year, I have come up with a two-part strategy for success. Crosstrain! Do not have fondue (and wine) with Serge in Geneva the night before the race. With this plan, I cannot go wrong. Undoubtedly, some of you out there are asking, how do you intend to crosstrain? The answer is, of course, step aerobics. A few weeks ago, Jens, my officemate, and I went down to the Centre Sportif to sign up for gym passes for the semester. Now, the EPFL/UNIL gym is not particularly impressive -- even though there are ten times as many students, it...

Lately, things at work have not been going particularly well. My main project (since my arrival) has been to build a set of gradient coils which are the basis of a magnetic resonance microscope. My problem, of late, has been that for reasons unknown to me, my gradient coils have developed a nasty habit of killing themselves in the middle of a measurement. What does a dead gradient coil look like? Here's an early kill of mine: Fig. 1: A destroyed coil. The red lines are wires which carry very large currents (up to 100 A) but for only very short times (no longer than one millisecond). The Aluminum frame transports the heat away from the wires and is connected to a water cooling system. Notice the dark charring, the melted plastic, and the overall ugliness of the situation. When something like this happens, I have to scrape out all the bad stuff, replace everything and start over. It is a time-consuming and boring process and one at which I have become far too skilled. With ...

It is wintertime in Switzerland, which means that it is ski time in Switzerland. Fortunately, there has been a lot of snow the last few weeks which means that the skiing is good and even total bums like me can go out and have fun. It is my aim that before I leave this country I will have advanced to the level of "mediocre" skier, no matter how much pain, suffering and freezing weather that involves. So far, there hasn't been too much of any of that bad stuff, but then again, my advancement hasn't progressed very far. Right after the New Year, my labmate Jens had an apartment in the mountains reserved for a week of skiing with his girlfriend and some friends of theirs that would be visiting. Due to some last-minute changes of plan, a space opened up in the apartment and I was invited to join Jens and his friends for a couple days of skiing. As I had stayed in the US until after the New Year, I basically got off the plane here in Switzerland, unpacked my bags from ...

Seeing as how I saw/meet about 90% of my reading public in the last couple of weeks, I didn't feel very motivated to keep the blog updated. I mean, if you guys wanted to know what was up, you probably had a good opportunity to ask me in person. At any rate, I do hope to keep updating this thing, at least sporadically, and before I left for vacation I actually started an update before things got too hectic and it got shelved and now seem like as good a time as any to get back to business. Sometime ago (almost a month, I think), I headed off to beautiful Grenoble, France to visit my good friend Loren. Although Grenoble is always rocking, I chose this weekend in particular for two reasons: first, I heard that the most popular Romanian folkloric dance group in the city would be giving a performance; and second, the Fête des Lumières was taking place in nearby Lyon. Many of you, dear readers, probably do not know about my interest in Romanian folkloric dancing. Admittedly, even I d...

Last week, I finally bought a toaster. Why did I wait this long? Well, the biggest reason was that I just couldn't really find anything that fit both my demanding tastes and my cheapskate nature. Toasters are somewhat of a luxury item here (I saw some that were $300) so there weren't a lot of cheap options. Second, I don't have any counter space in my apartment and I took a long time convincing myself that I could rearrange things so that I wouldn't have to leave it on the floor. And finally, every time I found one, I either gave up on the purchase because my arms were already full of groceries, or I just didn't have the patience to wait in a ridiculously long line -- electronic stores in Lausanne seem to be chronically understaffed. Anyway, a price/convenience nexus formed at the store near my apartment the other day and I decided to pick up this winning model. Fig. 1: I've tried the "Crusty Normal" and let me tell you, it's a piece of crap c...

What to do on Thanksgiving if you're a vegetarian?  If one is fortunate to have lots of relatives who are excellent cooks, well, one just enjoys an endless supply of vegetarian side courses and such (this was my technique while in San Diego).  But, let's say you're not the world's best cook and you still want to have a special, gut-busting meal for the big day.  One word: Fondue. As I've already fielded a number of requests for this already, I feel like now is as good a time as any to put "my" famous fondue recipe online for easy reference. Fondue moitié-moitié (as adapted from Serge's recipe) Fig. 1: Thanksgiving is very big in Switzerland on account of the large number of Swiss who came to American and were kicked out.  For bonus points: what is wrong with this picture? Ingredients: 200 g cheese per person Kick this up to 250 - 300g for "heavy hitters" moitié-moitié means "half-n-half" -- half the cheese should be gruyère and t...

As many of you know, November 11th is important for three unrelated reasons.  First, it was the day that the armistice marking the end of WWI was signed (hence its original name, Armistice Day) which ultimately became Veterans' Day; Second, it is the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut; and most importantly of all, it is the birthday of Terrie Sue Crabtree Sangiorgio, my Mom. As I am again unable to celebrate the event in person, I am compelled to send my birthday wishes electronically.  Happy Birthday Mom!  (Click here!!) Fig. 1: Mumsie and I P.S. Watch the video quickly as the last time I did something like this (the infamous Basil video), I got a take-down notice from Warner Music Group.  Hopefully the video will last in tact long enough for everyone to see it.