blog@maumae.net

I haven't posted anything in the past 5 days. Partly because things are settling down (everything is relative: what I mean is, compared to the rush of delivery) and partly because there is much to do. These two statements seem incompatible, but they're not. As all parents in this period, we are a bit overwhelmed by the newborn routine: Change diaper, feed her, put her to bed, start again. With every now and then a short period of awareness for the baby, during which she is with us, watching here and there stuff with bright color -mostly. We've to arrange our schedule around this, for simple activities like lunch or dinner.

So, we came back home 2 days after the delivery. The three of us have been out together only once since then, to visit Anaïs's pediatrician, Dr Wilson. She has only lost 80 grams since she was born, which is good (most babies lose way more than this). She is feeding very well. Sometimes too well -we have the feeling she's gonna burst. At night, she wakes up every 3 hours, so that's not too bad. Bottom line: the parents are enjoying every minute of it.

Je n'ai rien posté dans les derniers 5 jours. En partie parce que les choses se sont calmées (par rapport au rush de l'accouchement... tout est relatif), et en partie parce qu'il y a beaucoup à faire. Ça parait imcompatible, mais ça ne l'est pas: nous sommes rentrés dans la routine du nouveau-né: changer la couche, la nourrir, la mettre au lit, et recommencer. Avec ici et là une période où Anaïs est reveillée et alerte, pendant laquelle elle est avec nous et regarde à droite et à gauche, son regard attiré par les choses de couleurs vives. Il nous faut arranger notre emploi du temps autour du sien, même pour des activités aussi simples que les repas.

Pour revenir à ces 4 derniers jours; nous sommes sortis de l'hopital 48 heures après l'accouchement. Nous ne sommes ressortis tous ensemble que pour aller chez le pédiatre d'Anaïs, le Dr Wilson, Vendredi matin. Elle n'a perdu que 80 grammes depuis la naissance, ce qui est bien (la plupart des bébés perdent bien plus que ça dans les 15 premiers jours). Elle mange trés bien. Quelque fois trop bien - on a l'impression qu'elle va exploser. La nuit, elle se réveille toutes les 3 heures environ, ça pourrait être pire. En conclusion: les parents savourent chaque minute.

Posted by francois at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by francois at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friends,

Baby Anaïs (Gabrielle Leilani) was born this morning (May 22) at 11:39!

Labor was relatively short (for Céline's first born), and extremely well timed. We arrived at the hospital at 7:20, Céline got an epidural at around 8:30, and the baby was born at 11:39. She weighs 7lb10oz (3.450kg) and is 20inches tall (or long...she doesn't stand up yet). Céline and Anaïs are doing very well and they are both recuperating right now.

Below are some pictures of the event. The first two ones are *before*, the rest is after. Click on the image to get a large version.

Cher amis et Famille,

Bébé Anaïs (Gabrielle Leilani) est née ce matin (22 Mai) à 11:39!

Le travail a été relativement court (pour le premier né de Céline), et trés bien orchestré. Après les premières contractions à 4:50, nous somme arrivés a l'hopital à 7:20, Céline a eu sa peridurale a 8:30 environ, et le bébé est arrivé à 11:39. Elle pèse 3kg450 et mesure 51cm. Céline et Anaïs vont bien. Elle récupère à l'heure qu'il est (le père essaye de trouver aussi quelques heures de sommeil à la maison).

Voici quelques photos de l'évènement. Les deux premieres photos ont été prises *avant*, les autres après. Cliquez sur les images pour une version plus grande.

Posted by francois at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Céline has had contraction for over an hour now, every 2 and a half mn now. I just called the doctor and she is sending us to the hospital for monitoring.

The bottomline is that it seems it has started.

Ca commence! Céline a des contractions toutes les 2 mn et demi. Ca a commencé a 4:50, il y a plus d'une heure. Je viens juste d'appeller le docteur qui nous envoie à l'hopital pour monitoring.

Posted by francois at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Still no baby. We even went to the movies today to watch "da Vinci Code". Céline is feeling well.

Toujours pas de bébé. Suspense. Nous avons même été au cinéma voir le "da Vinci Code". Céline se sent bien.

Posted by francois at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Céline just told me she felt like the Darshanid princess in Lanfeust. For those who don't know Lanfeust, here is an excerpt (click on the image to enlarge).

Translation of the comics:

• "The heart of the child beats. He is well."
• "I know that! But why doesn't she deliver? It's been now three years that she is due!"
• "For forty month I have contemplated her round belly, waiting for my heir."
• "Medicine does not have an answer for everything my lord. There are mysteries that only the gods can explain."

Céline vient just de me dire qu'elle se sentait comme la princesse Darshanide dans Lanfeust. Une petite planche pour se rafraichir les idées...(cliquez sur l'image pour une version plus grande)

Posted by francois at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're receiving lots of calls from many of you. So I've decided to "go public" and post progress here on this blog. This way you can satisfy your curiosity and we can keep our sanity.

So at this time, no real progress. Céline is overdue by 3 days now. Baby keeps moving a lot, but does not seem to find the exit, or even to make any sign he/she wants out. So this morning we went to the hospital and did a "non-stress test" (baby's stress that is), to determine if everything was still good for the baby. It was. Heart rate between 110 and 160, baby moving often, which we were told is a sign he/she is healthy.

I will keep you guys posted. In particular, I will really try to post when we go off to the hospital.

Note: and by the way, for those really impatient, you can see pictures of the baby here.

Nous recevons beaucoup d'appels de nombreux d'entre vous. J'ai donc décidé d'utiliser ce blog pour tenir tout ceux qui le désirent au courant de l'évolution de la situation.

Pour l'instant, pas de réel progrès. La date prévue est maintenant passée de 3 jours. Le bébé bouge beaucoup, mais ne semble pas trouver la sortie, ou ne le veut pas. Ce matin, nous sommes allés à l'hopital pour passer un test de "non-stress" pour le bébé, histoire de vérifier qu'il est toujours a l'aise. Ca semble être le cas. Son rythme cardiaque est entre 110 et 160 batements à la minute, et il bouge effectivement beaucoup; on nous a dit que tout cela était bon signe.

Bon, dans tous les cas, ne vous impatientez pas: je ferai tout mon possible pour tenir ce blog à jour, heure par heure si cela est nécessaire. En particulier, je ne manquerai pas de vous tenir au courant d'un départ à l'hopital ou bien entendu de la naissance elle-même!

Note: Pour les plus impatients. Des photos du bébé sont déjà disponibles ici.

Posted by francois at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm just coming out of a talk to the Gemini Board of Directors. It was well received I thin (Doug tells me this was basically the only good news the board received during this gathering...). It's always easy, and a pleasure, to present good news!

To download a quicktime copy of the talk (1.9MB), click on the image on the left (it is a clickable movie: the talk transitions are activated by clicking in the quicktime window).

The talk focuses on altair upgrades (field lens and LGS), but the highlight was definitely the first (and only) images done with Altair in LGS mode, i.e. using a laser guide star. In particular, we did a nice image of M16 (pillars of the eagle nebula) that compares well with its HST equivalent -the latest being in the visible. This M16 comparison is a clear illustration of how infrared light goes through gas/dust much better than visible light.

Posted by francois at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Phew.

I got cold sweats.

My brand new iPod Nano froze today. I have had it only 5 days. I was not listening to it; it was paused, on "hold", ini my (ample) pocket. I did not bump it, not shook it, nor bend it. I have been very gentle with it. But this afternoon, going out of Starbucks, I pulled it out of my pocket, and it was not responsive. The screen was blank (nothing on it whatsoever, as if the battery was out). I looked on the web, and found this nice site. I finally revived it after 3 or 4 hold-on/hold-off then reboot. It's ok now. I hope this won't happen again anytime soon.

Update from july 10: it seems to have fixed itself now. Go figure.

Posted by francois at 07:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Even though the switch to the Intel Mac was much less painful than anticipated, it's still worth documenting.

I received my MacBook Pro (2GHz, 2GB RAM) last Thursday evening. I proceeded with the setup right away, of course, and I basically was done at the end of the next day. The main problem I had was with the blog install (what else?), in particular with phpMyAdmin/mysql. Note that during the last weeks, I had slowly tried to upgrade many apps to their universal versions, to ease out the transition.

1. USER ACCOUNT: I started trying to move my home account (and the rest) with the migration manager. This did not work. For some reason, my old powerbook would not play nicely when started in firewire target disk. The sign appears, but it is not seen from the outside. It's not completely surprising, as I know something is wrong with its network config/internal (e.g. VPN that does not work). I tried many other things (e.g. mounting the MacBook as firewire disk), but eventually did the following:
   1. Started the MacBook with no migration
   2. Created a main account sigo
   3. From the sigo account, created the frigaut account, and used NetInfo Manager to change the uid/gid to 3090.
   4. chown the frigaut account with new gid/uid as root.
   5. Connected both laptop thru ethernet (got a 169.254 working address when referenced from this local network).
   6. rsync'd powerbook to macbook using:

      PB> rsync -Hlptruv /Users/frigaut/ frigaut@169.254.xx.xx:/Users/frigaut
      

      This of course has the advantage of preserving soft and hard links, permission, but not owner. Ownership can be preserved using option -o, which I did not use here. There's of course the problem that owners may not have the same uid on both systems (like www?), so I don't know how this option performs.
2. /USR/LOCAL: Once the user accounts were transfered, I transfered /usr/local, still using rsync. had to chmod 777 /usr/local on macbook and Xfered things as myself, not root. Got rid of a number of things in /usr/local after the Xfer (Trolltech, trimmed svn backup directory).
3. DEV TOOLS: Installed the Developer Tools and X11.app n the MacBook, from the install CDs.
4. FINK: Re-installed fink from scratch. This was really painless. Many packages are in binary form, so it goes real fast. The MacBook also helps whenever compile time comes. gcc is really fast on this machine.
5. WEBSERVER: Copied over /Library/WebServer (mounting the PB from the MB)
6. BLOG: I tried several things for the blog. Basically, what it needs is:
   • Movable Type. I just transfered the mt-static in the CGI directory (as part of moving /Library/WebServer over). No need to re-install, especially as this install was fairly recent.
   • mysql, and the perl DBI and DBD.
   I knew from previous experience that this install could be tricky. I had my share of problems, which were related to the php installation: that's because before trying to make movable type work, I wanted to make phpMyAdmin work. And it did not. I finally tracked this to php. I needed to install php5 (from entropy.ch) and edit the http.conf to use it (at the same time, I changed http.conf to enable DAV). Simply add at the end of /etc/http/http.conf:

   # begin entropy.ch PHP module activation
   Include /usr/local/php5/entropy-php.conf
   # end entropy.ch PHP module activation
   
   # begin entropy.ch PHP module activation
   AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
   AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
   DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
   # end entropy.ch PHP module activation
   

   Then phpMyAdmin was working and I could create the mt user and db. The rest was without problem:
   1. I installed mysql from the binary universal release found at mysql.com (including a nice preference pane),
   2. installed perl-dbi using fink,
   3. and perl:DBD from CPAN
   I could then access the blog admin panels and post on the blog with ecto.
7. APPS: Moved applications, install new versions when available.
8. ITUNES: De-authorized PB for iTunes.
9. Recompiled yorick for darwin-i386. Recompile many other libraries:
   • fftw3
   • fftw2
   • ncftp
   • epics base
   • note that I installed hdf5 and libpng thru fink (they had close to the latest version)
10. To date, I have only had issues with:
    • the epics SDDS extension, needed to build Striptool
    • ffmpeg. Can't build the darn thing.
    This is because only gcc-4 is available on the macbooks. And not all packages compile under gcc-4 of course.

Posted by francois at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had trouble since yesterday with Desktop Manager and Virtue. And then I found this page, which reports that

and goes on with detailed instructions.

I went ahead and implemented both of the proposed solutions, then rebooted. Virtue launched on login, and is now working (as far as sticky windows and moving windows between desktop, which was broken before I followed these instructions).

Posted by francois at 01:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm posting this from my new MacBook Pro.

Which means that I have received it (yesterday afternoon), and that movable type works on this machine, as well as mysql, the Perl DBI/DBD, phpMyAdmin, Ecto, etc...

I had some trouble again with mysql, but it was solved in an hour or so.

Boy, it's fast !

Posted by francois at 01:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's it. We've done it. Well, not entirely, but it's looking fairly good. here are the two first images we did with altair LGS the other night (past Wednesday night). We first did M13. Four pointings with NIRI F/14 (51"x51" FoV each). Pixel size 49.8mas. Resolution about 0.16" (see comment below):

Then we pointed M16, the Eagle Nebula. We concentrated on the central pillar/bridge, but we did it in Kprime and H. I have here only the K' reduction. Haven't done the H yet, as I believe it's gonna be bad (not a lot of signal in H). The FWHM of the stars in this image is about 0.14", quite uniform across the field.

So, why is the angular resolution so bad w.r.t to the diffraction limit? Because we did not get the time to refine the NCPAs. We did a first pass, and got about 4.8 pixels at F/32 (so about 100mas), but we lost the setting as we were pointing other objects (during a slew, the TCC loads the default NIRI MCPA file, which is a good thing). Also, the focus was not perfect. Focus stays a problem with altair LGS, we'll have to do something about the open loop model (trombone position vs zenith angle). Note that the PSF was usually quite stable, but affected by a very strong quadrufoil. The PSF was actually like a cross, with no core when far enough from focus. Details in this PSF were of the order of the diffraction limit, so I am confident that TT correction was adequate.

Note: These images have been basically: sky subtracted, average-combined, and slightly contrast enhanced (see datared.i in Data/Altair-MK/2006may04/NIRI/)

Posted by francois at 05:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)