Noor Ghouse

July 26th, 2012

Hey everyone! 

 These past couple of weeks have been pretty exciting in the antelope world. I've analyzing the month of data in which a 7.4  magnitude earthquake occurred in the region where the seismometers are. Seeing the seismographs from when the earthquake hit and their aftershocks are very interesting and quite captivating.  At first, it was a little frustrating to Reorganize the associated picks, but through much practice it got  easier. I am now looking at the previous month to hope I can move onto a couple of more months to analyze and get more data to support a strong abstract (a very big goal I'm working to achieve). I also have to revisit gmt and scripting, so I'm in for a busy, but always progressive final weeks of the internship.

outside of the lab, my summer keeps on going smoothly! Hanging out with friends, going home every now and then, and it Ramadan! Ramadan is a great way to get much of my lab work done. The more I work, the less I think of eating and/or drinking. It's safe to say progress is increasing in the lab. Calvin left a few days ago so now the people who remain in the lab room are my two roommates and a grad student. 

Well that's it for now, I'm pretty stoked to see how the final weeks turn out.

Noor

July 5th, 2012

Hey Everyone!

sorry for the late blog, theres just been so much going on lately! ok, so last time I blogged I left off on mapping up earthquake events on lat and lon. I had to map multiple lat and lon plots to reveiw accuracies of associated picks through antelope. After deliberating with Mike, we both came to a conclusion that the parameters that dont pick too many, yet keep a trend in the mapping data would be most suitable to run through 6 years of seismic data. Since then we've been running the parameters which best locates earthquakes and I have been reorganizing the arrivals.

As I progress through the internship, some of my goals have been accomplished such as

1) As the weeks move on, I have gotten better at GMT and scripting. I still have a long ways to go to call myself the "Master of GMT" but I'm now comfortable and capable on working with them.

2) The amount of progress throughout the day has been increased as I get familiar with coding and analyzing earthquakes.

Similar to David and Greg, I've been analyzing earthquakes through Antelope. Antelope is very familiar to me because I've used it for previous research. The only difficult task that comes with antelope is uncompromising residuals from beautifully picked arrivals.

Since the internship has started I've been enjoying my summer at my home university. A bunch of the undergrads in the geology department are still in oxford so the summer has consisted of burrito nights and fun times. I also went to my hometown a couple of weekends ago for a family friends wedding which was a nice break from the lab. I'm really excited to see where my work will take me in the next couple of weeks.

Back to work!

Noor

June 10th, 2012

Alas! After a long week of unwinding from orientation, unpacking, and starting up research I can finally sit down and blog about my first week. Being based at my home university is amazing because I can move into the apartment I'll be living in for the next year. Its also good because I'm familiar with the campus and the grad students working in the department. Before monday, I showed my fellow IRIS buddy and labmate, Calvin, the life and sites of Oxford. I also get the privelage of working near my two apartment-mates for the summer, Katie and Sarah. The weather in Oxford is usually Sunny and warm so its perfect weather to eat out on the front steps of Shideler while watching the eager incoming freshmen leave the student center everyday during their orientation.

 After doing further reading on the details and importance of my project on the Oaxaca segment, I started making scripts to produce depth and lat. cross sections of the earthquake events. after a good while of brushing off Unix/Linux skills from a while back and with the help of Mike, my scripts were able to run smoothly. Mike and I also met at the end of the week to work on my self rubric. after meeting with him and discussing the rubric, I have a better idea of what I need to work on to present exceptional work at AGU in December.

I also took Katie's advice on writing 3 things i should get done in the lab everyday and it has actually helped me get a lot of work done throughout the week.

Monday                  Tuesday           Wednesday        Thursday       Friday

Read article          Finish article    set up script 1      fix script 1   present cross sections to mike

learn concepts     learn concept    set up script 2     fix script 2   self rubric

meet with mike     review linux       script script 3     fix script 3    start mapping

as you can probably tell, I was having a tad bit of difficulty with scripting, but the end results are what matters most. I also started writing scripts for mapping the earthquake events which I will be focusing on next week. 

oh, before I forget, I work with Dr. Mike Brudzinski. Hes an amazing host professor. I'm pretty comfortable going to him if I'm having problems in the lab or if I need him to check on something I've been working on. I'm really looking forward to spending the summer in his lab and producing substantial research alongside him.