This post marks the completion of my honours thesis, as part of my BSc. (Hons) degree. It was a pleasure to work and learn under the supervision of Prof. Geoff Pryde at Griffith University, in close collaboration with Ben Lanyon in the laboratory of Prof. Andrew White at The University of Queensland.

The project served as my introduction to the world of experimental photonic implementations of quantum information. The aim of the project was to attempt to combine two techniques—quantum nondemolition measurement, and unambiguous state discrimination. The project was successful insofar as the experiment reproduced what we expected to obtain theoretically, though considerably more work would have been required in order to achieve complete nondemolishing unambiguous state discrimination. The PDF of the thesis can be found here.

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A followup to Wolverine claws.

My parents quickly became aware of my creation (that is to say, I told them about it, and they had helped out with a couple of things) and they insisted that “Wolverine” make a similar appearance at Dad's 60th birthday party. The theme of this party was different, but it was craftily crafted (the best kind of crafting) so that my costume would still fit.

Now, the thing is, honestly, the claws barely lasted the party they were originally created for. The blocks between each claws were coming apart, and so I had retired the claws to ornamental duty.

But my parents insisted, so I had to bring them out of retirement. To fix the problem of the loose connections between claws, Dad got his fibreglassing epoxy goo and plastered around the blocks to reinforce them. There was a bit of a problem, though, that after the epoxy set the claws were too close together in a couple of spots. A bit of sanding into the wood with a Dremel fixed that, but it also further weakened the structural integrity of the claws.

The claws were worn again for the party, and they worked well [...]

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Back in the days around the time of the release of the first X-Men movie on DVD, I heard that the actor who played Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), in order to fully flesh out the sideburn-awesomeness of the character, had to have extra fake hair pasted on his own sideburns around his ears. Being the virile, hairy young man I was (Still am!), I reckoned I would have little trouble growing the necessary fleece. That is, if I ever had the inclination to.

Several years later I was invited to a costume party, the theme being “Superheroes and Supervillains”. This was the perfect opportunity to test my facial-hair-growing power: I decided to go as Wolverine! So over the course of a month the thin goatee I had was joined by big mutton chops.

But that's not what this article is about. The really cool thing about Wolverine, of course, is not his facial hair. (Though, you have to admit, that is a pretty cool do.) No, the really cool thing is his adamantium claws. Now, in this respect, me not having had an adamantium skeleton grafted to my body at some point during my previous life meant that reproducing the claws [...]

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Mid-June of 2005, my parents and I were trying to come up with an idea for something to do during my impending summer holidays from study. For some reason having “something to do” during holidays is a good thing, though I can't say I know why that is. Anyway, we came up with a tour of the highlights of the Northern Territory.

We stayed in the flat I use during semester the night before we were to fly out from Brisbane to Alice Springs. Of course, my parents took the double bed in my room, and I was relegated to the spare room with its bed that my feet hang four inches over the edge of. Anyway, with a 5 AM start we rushed to the airport where we got our bags checked, and then waited for an hour or two. It's the thing you do at airports...

A three hour flight, and at about 11 AM local time we arrived in Alice Springs. It's red out there. And dry. And cold, in wintertime. Of course, where-ever there is the slightest hint of water, the vegetation grows and occludes the red dirt—it's only out in the desert that you [...]

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During my undergraduate studies I was invited to join the “Advanced Studies” stream of my Bachelor of Science. This involved doing a few reports on assorted research topics, culminating in a final project as an introduction to participating in scientific research. I did my project under Prof. John Dobson, investigating the potential suitability of using wavelet transforms to enhance the speed of numerical solutions of van der Waals forces in solid materials.

I took several wavelet transform families and types, and examined the outcomes of their application to the matrix representations of the two operators involved in the force calculations. This was only a preliminary study, so it's uncertain how applicable the results ultimately are. That said, I found that certain wavelet transformations make the matrices less dense and, thus, possibly easier to solve. The PDF of my project report can be found here.

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