Well, in the two weeks since my last post I've been coming to terms with my coming unemployment, and doing a lot of thinking about where to take my life from here. I don't have anything definite to report yet, but I think I'm finally ready to start looking around.
I went to a seminar at Subaru last Monday that was very helpful in this regard. The seminar was on Data Visualization, by Mark SubbaRao from the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and in the process of watching incredible visualizations of hundreds of thousands of galaxies and learning about how correct color map choice can dramatically increase the chances of a doctor noticing problems with your arteries, I came to a realization: I really enjoy data visualization.
During the talk I found myself thinking about how the times I'd had the most fun at my job working for the JAC and EAO were when I was designing systems and writing scripts to visualize data. Looking back even further, I've always loved seeing things like artists' impressions of exotic astronomical systems, and when I first discovered graphics programs like Inkscape, the GIMP, and Blender, one of the purposes I put them towards after figuring out how to use them was making my own such artist's impressions. (Some of my astronomy-related artwork on this blog can be seen here.) I'm a very visual person, and love figuring out new ways to make abstract concepts and abstruse ideas more comprehensible.
In fact, speaking of systems for visualizing data, I'm reminded that I never did introduce the project that occupied the majority of my time at work last year, the SCUBA-2 Calibration Database. This is a webpage linked from the EAO website that allows access to a database containing information on every calibration for SCUBA-2, the JCMT's powerful sub-millimeter continuum camera. You can search dates, date ranges, or pick a semester and project code to get a list of all calibrations taken on nights that project took data. You can filter by specific calibrators if you want, and when the results have been returned there are download links that will take you to the Canadian Advanced Data Centre where you can download all raw and reduced files associated with an observation.
Of course, the best part in my opinion is the option to graph the results you get. You have to enable the option, but doing so will let you graph anything from a single night's worth of observations to every single calibration ever taken with SCUBA-2. I had a lot of fun learning how to get a dynamically created image served up on command and writing the graphing script to get an interesting and useful image out. I've been adding some new features I always wanted to get around to in to my development version recently, so there will also be some new stuff released in the next two weeks.
(If you're wondering what these “Arcsec” and “Peak” FCFs you can plot are, FCF stands for Flux Calibration Factor, and they're essentially the ratio of a particular number to what that number would be if there were no pesky atmosphere getting in the way and attenuating the energy received from it. Put simply, Peak FCFs deal with the maximum brightness of an object and are very sensitive to proper focus of the telescope, while Arcsecond FCFs deal with the total energy received and thus should be more resistant to small changes in focus. Being out of focus moves the energy around in the image, but you have to be really out of focus for it to move outside the area being measured. The gray horizontal bar across the graph represents the range the FCFs should generally be in; as you can see, there are plenty of times this is not the case, and there a whole host of reasons why this is not the case ranging from dish deformation due to residual heat at the start of the night to long-term drifts in the Water Vapor Meter that estimates the transparency of the astmosphere.)
Anyway, that's how things have been going for me. I'm looking to start getting back into graphic design a bit after being introduced by a coworker to the work of a friend of his dealing with using Blender for scientific data visualization, so who knows, I might have some new projects to show here in the near future. We'll see! A hui hou!
Monday, March 14, 2016
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Automating Yourself Out of a Job
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope running under East Asian Observatory management. Going to work this morning, I can definitively state that being unemployed was not on my mind, yet that's the situation I find myself facing this evening after going over my end-of-probation report with my boss.
And it's not even as if I did anything bad or poorly, either. If anything, I did too well. The job I was originally hired for, three years ago, was as a Data Quality Assistant, meant to handle simple but time-consuming tasks that my boss didn't have the time for but needed done. I've steadily worked to automate and reduce the amount of time spent manually doing the recurring parts, to the point where I'm not really doing that particular job anymore, or at least for no more than a tiny fraction of my time each week. I've automated it so effectively that there isn't really a need for that position anymore, and with the telescope facing a budget shortfall this year and the only positions left to fill requiring people with skillsets I don't have, it was a simple business decision from the top to cut costs. (Just to be clear, I'm not being replaced or anything; my position simply won't exist after this month due to there being no need for it.)
At this point I'm torn between conflicting thoughts, between pride that I did such a good job automating stuff with no formal computer science education, and the sad realization that that still puts me out of a job. It's such a terrible feeling, too; if I'd been fired for being lazy, or embezzling money or something it'd feel like a justifiable consequence, but being let go for doing your job too well flips around into a sort of cruel irony. This isn't the kind of reward for hard work I was always taught to expect! It feels like a major disincentive to working hard in the future, if that's a potential outcome.
As for what comes next? I don't know. I'm still employed through the end of the month so there'll be a lot of cleaning up code loose ends and passing things on to people. Then after that? We'll see, I guess. I'm still kind of in shock.
And it's not even as if I did anything bad or poorly, either. If anything, I did too well. The job I was originally hired for, three years ago, was as a Data Quality Assistant, meant to handle simple but time-consuming tasks that my boss didn't have the time for but needed done. I've steadily worked to automate and reduce the amount of time spent manually doing the recurring parts, to the point where I'm not really doing that particular job anymore, or at least for no more than a tiny fraction of my time each week. I've automated it so effectively that there isn't really a need for that position anymore, and with the telescope facing a budget shortfall this year and the only positions left to fill requiring people with skillsets I don't have, it was a simple business decision from the top to cut costs. (Just to be clear, I'm not being replaced or anything; my position simply won't exist after this month due to there being no need for it.)
At this point I'm torn between conflicting thoughts, between pride that I did such a good job automating stuff with no formal computer science education, and the sad realization that that still puts me out of a job. It's such a terrible feeling, too; if I'd been fired for being lazy, or embezzling money or something it'd feel like a justifiable consequence, but being let go for doing your job too well flips around into a sort of cruel irony. This isn't the kind of reward for hard work I was always taught to expect! It feels like a major disincentive to working hard in the future, if that's a potential outcome.
As for what comes next? I don't know. I'm still employed through the end of the month so there'll be a lot of cleaning up code loose ends and passing things on to people. Then after that? We'll see, I guess. I'm still kind of in shock.
Monday, February 29, 2016
A Wedding! And the Flu.
It's been pretty quiet on the ol’ blog front here this month. The main reason for this is that I was in California last weekend for my sister's wedding, then caught something (apparently the flu) just before flying home on Monday. I then spent the rest of the week primarily being miserable and bedridden, barely able even to passively enjoy anything let alone write a blog post. A week later and I've recovered enough to write this short post, though I'm still tiring pretty early in the evening.
Other than getting sick, it was a good trip. I finally finished the doily I'd been working on for practice since last summer and gave it to my sister as a wedding present:
And here's a picture of the happy couple themselves:
Congratulations guys!
And happy leap year while I'm at it for everyone else, I guess. I dunno, I'm still a little addled from the flu. A hui hou!
Other than getting sick, it was a good trip. I finally finished the doily I'd been working on for practice since last summer and gave it to my sister as a wedding present:
And here's a picture of the happy couple themselves:
Congratulations guys!
And happy leap year while I'm at it for everyone else, I guess. I dunno, I'm still a little addled from the flu. A hui hou!
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Gravity Waves!
Two days ago, on February 11th, the LIGO and Virgo interferometer collaborations announced the first direct observations of gravity waves (actually detected on September 14th, 2015). Why is this a big deal? Gravity waves are one of the predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, predicted a hundred years ago in 1916. They were also the last major prediction of general relativity not to have been experimentally verified, and have been the object of search for over fifty years, making this an especially momentous detection.
Gravity waves are caused by the finite speed of propagation of gravity, and are created when any mass accelerates (they're analogous to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by an accelerating charged particle). They're essentially ripples in spacetime, like the wake of a boat on water. However, due to the weakness of gravity, they're very, very weak unless you're talking about extreme concentrations of mass in extremely tiny regions. Thus, the best place to look for them is in binary systems of neutron stars or black holes, and indeed the detected waves most likely came from one of the latter.
You see, all orbiting masses radiate energy away in the form of gravity waves. For most systems, the amount of energy is negligible—for the Earth-Sun system, the radiated energy is about 200 watts; probably less energy than the computer I'm typing this on is using at the moment. The energy lost causes orbiting bodies to move closer together over time, though for the Earth-Sun system the distance works out to about the width of a proton per day (i.e., nothing to worry about). However, for dense masses in close proximity to each other like two orbiting black holes, the amount can be significant enough that it causes the orbits to decay much more rapidly.
Eventually the orbits shrink enough that the two objects (black holes, in this case) merge into a single object. As this happens the frequency of the radiated waves will rapidly rise, then level off in a way that gives a lot of information about the objects involved. In this case, we can say that the two objects were black holes with roughly 36 and 29 times the mass of the Sun, respectively. Unfortunately, due to the fact that only two interferometers actually detected the signal, we can't tell exactly where it came from, merely constrain it to an arc mostly within the South Celestial Hemisphere. It was likely pretty far away though, approximately \(1.3\pm0.6\) billion light-years away.
There's an interesting feedback effect that happens with this whole process: as the orbits radiate energy away as gravity waves, they shrink, but as they shrink, they radiate more energy away, which causes them to shrink faster, which makes them emit more energy, etc. From the detected signal, it turns out that in the last 20 thousandths of a second before the merger the two black holes were radiating away \(3.6\times10^{49}\) watts of power as gravity waves; to put that in perspective, that's more energy than is emitted as electromagnetic radiation by all the stars in the observable universe combined. (It really says something about the weakness of gravity that it took this absolutely mind-boggling amount of energy to actually be observable.)
All in all, this was a major step forward in verifying the last major prediction of general relativity, as well as opening up a whole new avenue of investigation for astrophysicists. Now that we know it's possible, hopefully we'll see more work put into additional, more sensitive interferometers in the future that'll allow us to detect weaker gravitational waves from more sources. A hui hou!
Gravity waves are caused by the finite speed of propagation of gravity, and are created when any mass accelerates (they're analogous to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by an accelerating charged particle). They're essentially ripples in spacetime, like the wake of a boat on water. However, due to the weakness of gravity, they're very, very weak unless you're talking about extreme concentrations of mass in extremely tiny regions. Thus, the best place to look for them is in binary systems of neutron stars or black holes, and indeed the detected waves most likely came from one of the latter.
You see, all orbiting masses radiate energy away in the form of gravity waves. For most systems, the amount of energy is negligible—for the Earth-Sun system, the radiated energy is about 200 watts; probably less energy than the computer I'm typing this on is using at the moment. The energy lost causes orbiting bodies to move closer together over time, though for the Earth-Sun system the distance works out to about the width of a proton per day (i.e., nothing to worry about). However, for dense masses in close proximity to each other like two orbiting black holes, the amount can be significant enough that it causes the orbits to decay much more rapidly.
Eventually the orbits shrink enough that the two objects (black holes, in this case) merge into a single object. As this happens the frequency of the radiated waves will rapidly rise, then level off in a way that gives a lot of information about the objects involved. In this case, we can say that the two objects were black holes with roughly 36 and 29 times the mass of the Sun, respectively. Unfortunately, due to the fact that only two interferometers actually detected the signal, we can't tell exactly where it came from, merely constrain it to an arc mostly within the South Celestial Hemisphere. It was likely pretty far away though, approximately \(1.3\pm0.6\) billion light-years away.
There's an interesting feedback effect that happens with this whole process: as the orbits radiate energy away as gravity waves, they shrink, but as they shrink, they radiate more energy away, which causes them to shrink faster, which makes them emit more energy, etc. From the detected signal, it turns out that in the last 20 thousandths of a second before the merger the two black holes were radiating away \(3.6\times10^{49}\) watts of power as gravity waves; to put that in perspective, that's more energy than is emitted as electromagnetic radiation by all the stars in the observable universe combined. (It really says something about the weakness of gravity that it took this absolutely mind-boggling amount of energy to actually be observable.)
All in all, this was a major step forward in verifying the last major prediction of general relativity, as well as opening up a whole new avenue of investigation for astrophysicists. Now that we know it's possible, hopefully we'll see more work put into additional, more sensitive interferometers in the future that'll allow us to detect weaker gravitational waves from more sources. A hui hou!
Sunday, January 31, 2016
We Need a SimFarm Remake
Anyone else out there remember playing SimFarm? It was one of Maxis' games from the early-mid 90's, though I didn't get to play it until around the turn of the millennium. Billed as “SimCity's country cousin” it was never as popular as its urban relative, as seen by the way SimCity has had multiple different versions over the years and a successful remake in Cities: Skylines, while SimFarm…hasn't.
And I think that's a shame, because I think there's the seed of a great game in SimFarm just waiting for an updated and modernized remake to bring it out. For those who haven't played it, SimFarm casts you as the owner of a small plot of land, empty but for your cozy little farm house and just waiting for you to develop it into a thriving family farm. Farming happens from a bird's-eye perspective where you oversee your various fields and animals. The weather changes over the course of an in-game year, and the climate of your starting area (you get to pick your location on a map of the lower forty-eight states at the start of the game) affects how well various crops do (apples do well in Washington, sunflowers in Kansas, etc.).
There a number of natural disasters that can happen at random, such as tornadoes, floods, and plagues of locusts, all of which can affect your farm in different ways. Somewhere on the map there's a small town, which periodically expands with different types of districts, some of which can also affect your farm (getting a fairground allows you to enter animals in competitions at the fair, and the airport allows you to buy and use cropdusters). Success in the game consists of managing your farm well (whether crops or animals) in such a way as to turn a profit, which allows you to buy additional land and expand your farm further.
All in all it was a fun experience (at least to my ~10-year-old self), and one that isn't really replicated in any game I'm aware of (please enlighten me if one exists!). To forestall potential criticism, I'm aware that there are games that play on similar themes. Probably the biggest and most famous is Farming Simulator 2015. Unlike SimFarm, however, Farming Simulator 2015 is operated in first-person mode with the player manually controlling various pieces of equipment. SimFarm, in contrast, has the player simply ordering things to be done (such as planting or harvesting a field), and the appropriate equipment springs into action if available (presumably piloted by invisible family or farm hands). Farming Simulator 2015 also uses pre-built maps that can't really be meaningfully changed, while a lot of SimFarm's charm comes from the way you can rearrange the map the way you see fit to build your dream farm.
I mentioned SimCity earlier, because I wanted to mention its 2015 remake Cities: Skylines by developer Colossal Order. The latest SimCity sequel (usually known as SimCity 2013) was widely panned by critics and players alike, and the people at Colossal Order decided to take it upon themselves to create a SimCity-like game from the ground up. The fruit of their efforts was Cities: Skylines, a critically-acclaimed, updated and modernized city-building game making full use of the many advances in the years since the original it was based on came out. I recount this to show what I'd like to see for SimFarm: someone to create a similar-but-modernized game from the ground up for today's audience taking advantage of today's technology. I'm not in a position to make one myself, but hey, maybe Colossal Order is taking suggestions on what to make next…
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Blog Post Plot
Well, here's the graph I promised in my last post. It took so long because I intended to take some features from the graphs I produce at work, but kept forgetting to copy the relevant code for perusal at home. As it turned out I only needed a little bit, and the graph was pretty easy to make once I sat down to do so. Anyway, here it is:
It's interesting to see the patterns that emerge. The early high count steadily drops around the middle of 2012, then after a little more variability seems to have settled into a surprisingly consistent alternating series of 2–3–2–3.
I really enjoy making graphs like this, iterating over and over, often dozens or scores of times, to get a graph that's both informative and aesthetically-pleasing (to me, at least). According to my terminal history, I ran the command to generate this graph sixty-two times, though of course a decent number of those time something threw an error and no new version of the graph was produced. And I'm reminded once again just how happy I am to have a job where I get to make interesting and beautiful plots—perhaps I can share some of them in the future.
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| Click for larger version. |
I really enjoy making graphs like this, iterating over and over, often dozens or scores of times, to get a graph that's both informative and aesthetically-pleasing (to me, at least). According to my terminal history, I ran the command to generate this graph sixty-two times, though of course a decent number of those time something threw an error and no new version of the graph was produced. And I'm reminded once again just how happy I am to have a job where I get to make interesting and beautiful plots—perhaps I can share some of them in the future.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Happy Sixth Anniversary, Blog!
Today marks six years to the day since I started this blog. Why is this the first such anniversary post on this blog, you ask? Because I thought it was only five years and had decided to write a nice “happy five-year anniversary, me!” post and only discovered it had actually been six years when I sat down to write it. (I suppose it's also a great demonstration of my normal facility for dates in general.)
I had an idea to make a plot showing the number of blog posts per month over the run of this blog, which in fact is what prompted this post in the first place. At the beginning of this blog I was putting out multiple blog posts per week; over time that ratio has flipped to several weeks per post frequently, and I'm curious to see exactly how and when that happened. Part of that is simply circumstances. Back when I started, I was a student, and despite a brutal scholastic schedule I could still find both the time and motivation for post-writing fairly frequently. Two years later and I've graduated, but taken a part-time job at the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station. Due to the binary nature of that job (days completely off vs. days spent entirely at work) I still had a lot of free days to think up and compose posts. Finally, a year later, at the beginning of 2013, I took my current job with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. This was (and still is, thankfully!) a full-time job with regular hours, but the downside was that it left me less time in general for post-writing and fewer days where I wasn't already tired from working.
Now, I mentioned a plot in the previous paragraphs, but alas! there are no plots gracing this particular post due to technical difficulties and a missing python-tkinter package that doesn't want to install. I really want to see what it would look like, however, so expect a post showcasing it in the near future. So check back soon, and a hui hou!
I had an idea to make a plot showing the number of blog posts per month over the run of this blog, which in fact is what prompted this post in the first place. At the beginning of this blog I was putting out multiple blog posts per week; over time that ratio has flipped to several weeks per post frequently, and I'm curious to see exactly how and when that happened. Part of that is simply circumstances. Back when I started, I was a student, and despite a brutal scholastic schedule I could still find both the time and motivation for post-writing fairly frequently. Two years later and I've graduated, but taken a part-time job at the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station. Due to the binary nature of that job (days completely off vs. days spent entirely at work) I still had a lot of free days to think up and compose posts. Finally, a year later, at the beginning of 2013, I took my current job with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. This was (and still is, thankfully!) a full-time job with regular hours, but the downside was that it left me less time in general for post-writing and fewer days where I wasn't already tired from working.
Now, I mentioned a plot in the previous paragraphs, but alas! there are no plots gracing this particular post due to technical difficulties and a missing python-tkinter package that doesn't want to install. I really want to see what it would look like, however, so expect a post showcasing it in the near future. So check back soon, and a hui hou!
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Christmas Music Singing
Merry belated Christmas and happy early New Year, everyone. It's a quiet Christmas holiday for me so I haven't had much to talk about. My big excitement for December so far was attending a Messiah sing-along for the first time.
I'd never been to a Messiah sing-along before so I didn't know what to expect, but I ended up having a lot of fun. The four voices of the choir were split up around the church and I ended up sitting in front of my choir director, who coincidentally also sings bass. This turned out to be very helpful as my ability at singing unfamiliar music can be summed up as “tempo, lyrics, pitch—pick any two!” (and while I'm intimately familiar with the solo parts of the Messiah, I get lost in the dense melismas of the multi-part choruses).
Ultimately, I had a great time with it (we didn't perform the entire work, just Act I, the Hallelujah chorus, and the final two choruses) and I hope to participate again next time I get a chance. A hui hou!
I'd never been to a Messiah sing-along before so I didn't know what to expect, but I ended up having a lot of fun. The four voices of the choir were split up around the church and I ended up sitting in front of my choir director, who coincidentally also sings bass. This turned out to be very helpful as my ability at singing unfamiliar music can be summed up as “tempo, lyrics, pitch—pick any two!” (and while I'm intimately familiar with the solo parts of the Messiah, I get lost in the dense melismas of the multi-part choruses).
Ultimately, I had a great time with it (we didn't perform the entire work, just Act I, the Hallelujah chorus, and the final two choruses) and I hope to participate again next time I get a chance. A hui hou!
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
PSA: Dengue Fever on the Big Island
I don't know how much coverage it's getting outside Hawaii, but here on the Big Island of Hawai‘i we're having the largest outbreak of dengue fever in a U.S. state since World War II (though there have been much larger ones in Puerto Rico and American Samoa). The number of confirmed cases passed a hundred and forty this week, with no immediate signs of slowing down. Dengue fever, if you don't know (as I didn't), is a mosquito-borne viral disease endemic in more than a hundred and ten countries, which can have potentially life-threatening effects.
This isn't the first outbreak in the island chain; the most recent outbreak happened on Maui a few decades ago, though only a total of eighty-seven cases were reported before it was contained. It remains to be seen if it can be similarly contained here on the Big Island, or whether it'll become endemic. Rather unnervingly, up to 80% of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic, so there could potentially be a lot of people on the island who've had it (and are [or were] potential spreaders) but don't know it.
The bright side (if you can call it a bright side) to all this is that the virus comes in five strains, exposure to any one of which grants lifelong immunity to that strain and is likely (as mentioned above) to cause no major problems. So far I don't think there have been any fatalities directly tied to it, despite the large number of reported cases. The problems really begin, however, when someone who's had it once contracts a different strain; then you start to get much higher chances of very dangerous complications.
The outbreak hasn't been confirmed to any particular location, and cases have been reported all over the island, so officials are warning people that infected mosquitoes could be anywhere. If you, gentle reader, are thinking of visiting the Big Island (specifically the Big Island, it hasn't shown up elsewhere yet) in the near future, you'd do well to investigate how things are going and how much progress is being made in the containment process, and take care not to get bitten. Stay safe! A hui hou!
This isn't the first outbreak in the island chain; the most recent outbreak happened on Maui a few decades ago, though only a total of eighty-seven cases were reported before it was contained. It remains to be seen if it can be similarly contained here on the Big Island, or whether it'll become endemic. Rather unnervingly, up to 80% of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic, so there could potentially be a lot of people on the island who've had it (and are [or were] potential spreaders) but don't know it.
The bright side (if you can call it a bright side) to all this is that the virus comes in five strains, exposure to any one of which grants lifelong immunity to that strain and is likely (as mentioned above) to cause no major problems. So far I don't think there have been any fatalities directly tied to it, despite the large number of reported cases. The problems really begin, however, when someone who's had it once contracts a different strain; then you start to get much higher chances of very dangerous complications.
The outbreak hasn't been confirmed to any particular location, and cases have been reported all over the island, so officials are warning people that infected mosquitoes could be anywhere. If you, gentle reader, are thinking of visiting the Big Island (specifically the Big Island, it hasn't shown up elsewhere yet) in the near future, you'd do well to investigate how things are going and how much progress is being made in the containment process, and take care not to get bitten. Stay safe! A hui hou!
Saturday, December 5, 2015
New Island Nishinoshima
This week I learned of a volcanic island about a thousand kilometers south of Tokyo named Nishinoshima (“western island” in Japanese). Prior to 1973, Nishinoshima was a tiny islet comprising the northwest ridge of an underwater caldera about a kilometer across and about a hundred meters beneath the ocean surface at its deepest. No eruptions at this volcano had ever been recorded in the historical record.
Starting in May 1973, however, the volcano began erupting, ultimately forming a new island to the east of the old one. The volcano fell silent a bit less than a year later, after which wave action joined the new and old islands (the new one being composed of a lot of cinder doubtless helped).
There things rested until November 2013 when the volcano began erupting again, creating another new islet off the southeast coast of the old one. This eruption continued vigorously until it had created an island larger than the one already existing. The Japanese government (which claims the island[s]) was reportedly waiting for the eruption to stop to give the new island a name, but this was rendered moot soon thereafter when the still-growing island connected to the old one, making a single island a bit over two square kilometers.
The eruption continues to this day (as far as I can tell), though it's become a lot less vigorous and may be dying down. Here's what the island looks like on Google Maps at the moment: the older part of the island is the north-western part in the lighter tan color (it's clearly recognizable in an image from December 8, 2013).
I thought it was a neat look at what the Hawaiian islands must have looked like at one point, breaching the surface of the ocean and building up to the towering edifices they became. The base Nishinoshima volcano already rises nearly three kilometers from the ocean floor and is nearly thirty kilometers across at its base, so it could presumably get a lot taller. All very interesting. A hui hou!
Starting in May 1973, however, the volcano began erupting, ultimately forming a new island to the east of the old one. The volcano fell silent a bit less than a year later, after which wave action joined the new and old islands (the new one being composed of a lot of cinder doubtless helped).
There things rested until November 2013 when the volcano began erupting again, creating another new islet off the southeast coast of the old one. This eruption continued vigorously until it had created an island larger than the one already existing. The Japanese government (which claims the island[s]) was reportedly waiting for the eruption to stop to give the new island a name, but this was rendered moot soon thereafter when the still-growing island connected to the old one, making a single island a bit over two square kilometers.
The eruption continues to this day (as far as I can tell), though it's become a lot less vigorous and may be dying down. Here's what the island looks like on Google Maps at the moment: the older part of the island is the north-western part in the lighter tan color (it's clearly recognizable in an image from December 8, 2013).
I thought it was a neat look at what the Hawaiian islands must have looked like at one point, breaching the surface of the ocean and building up to the towering edifices they became. The base Nishinoshima volcano already rises nearly three kilometers from the ocean floor and is nearly thirty kilometers across at its base, so it could presumably get a lot taller. All very interesting. A hui hou!
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