A few days back I mentioned that I had found this Horrible multiple choice exam. Well… I have finished it. On my fourth attempt, I got the solution out, and it works. What I eventually did was draw a grid and put in answers when I worked them out. That I did on the first three attempts. But this time I also wrote down which question had caused a mark in that box, so that if I found a result that looked strange I could work out if I had made a mistake. Anyway, here is my result sheet to prove that I did it… On old Pacific Power notepaper.

Later today I will try to go for another run. I will probably be more successful… This Time.

Photo of the Day

The following photo is of me in the Antarctic Museumn in Christchurch. One of the people at the conference took me there and it was worth the effort. This is the ‘Cool Room’ where it was significantly below zero. And I can assure you it really was cold.

I think I have mentioned before that I get to visit some strange and wonderful places on my trips. I get to see things that are not on the normal tourist route. Like the LAPD Air Wing in Los Angeles. The roof of the CNN Building in Hollywood. And this one which was General McArthur’s base or proposed base during World War II. The cavern is below the hill in the first photo. The entrance can be seen in the second photo. There was also a hidden entrance in the house on the hill but that required knowing that it was there, and a sheer drop of 50-100m straight down. It is possible to do, but not to be done lightly. The headquarters is deep underground in a man made set of caves.

Today the University of Canterbury is performing an experiment here. They used to do it in a cave elsewhere, but they were getting sheep ‘pounding’ above ruining the results, so they moved it into this cave which is more ‘stable’. They are measuring minute changes in the rotation of the earth using a device called a ‘Ring Laser’. I understand a but of what they are doing – enough to know that Einstein would have been proud. This last photo was in a connecting tunnel rather than either of the huge caverns. I tried to take photos of the caverns but the pictures did not turn out.

I can assure you that with the lights out the pace was really really dark. It was also very quiet apart from the whir in the background of some fans. According to the guide, the temperature stays within about 1 degree year round.