Just posting this so that the information is out there in one more google-indexed place.

If you're a Windows user (I have a feeling it works for mac users, too), and you need to revert to an older version of iTunes, say, because iTunes 9 is a process hog and is slowing down your computer like whoah, Filehippo hosts a bunch of old versions, so you can download what ever version you want (in my case, iTunes 8), uninstall the new iTunes, and then install the old version.

However, if you go to open iTunes, it'll complain that "The file iTunes Library.itl cannot be read because it was created with a newer version of iTunes," and won't load. To resolve this, go to your iTunes folder (for me it was in My Documents\My Music\iTunes),find the file "iTunes Library.itl", rename it something like "iTunes Library 9 backup.itl", and then go into the "Previous iTunes Libraries" folder. There should be a backup there from before you upgraded. If you copy that file and paste it in the iTunes directory (one directory up), then rename it "iTunes Library.itl", the old iTunes will load and run just fine.

Hope someone finds this info helpful one day...

Cul de Sac / Richard Thompson / Feb. 11, 2010
http://www.gocomics.com/features/48/feature_items/491184

That's right! Your loved one sniffling? Sure, it might be all cute and pathetic NOW, but is it really gonna be so adorable when they turn WEREWOLF and start snarling and biting? Just saying--keep your guard up.

I'm sure all you folks from the Midwest are laughing your asses off about how we Washingtonians can't handle a bit of snow. I think it was Tim Kaine who referred to our snowstorm this past weekend as, "an April day in Chicago."


WE didn't get our mail delivered to-day, and it sounds like we're not the only ones.

From washingtonpost.com:

1:30 p.m. Postal service is delivering, sort of

The U.S. Postal Service has been making attempts to deliver mail throughout the region. But they, too, have been affected by the snow in unexpected ways. The post office in Vienna had to be evacuated when snow on the roof started to make its presence felt.

Fairfax County fire department spokesman Dan Schmidt said postal employees noticed the ceiling beginning to bulge at 200 Lawyers Road NW, just off Maple Street in downtown Vienna early Monday morning. The ceiling was "fluxing about four to five inches," and so the office was closed about 8 a.m., Schmidt said.

It was not clear when the Vienna post office would reopen.
--Tom Jackman


The Washington Post is also running an online poll to name this next snowstorm scheduled to start to-morrow (for the last one, Snowmageddon seems to have beat out Snowpocalypse). The leading candidate right now is Snoverkill.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d

Wow. Just wow.

I. Am. Married.

So I've done a fair amount of traveling over the last few years. Flying to Austin to visit Jen, flying home for the breaks, flying to various cities to check out grad schools... I thought I knew the system pretty well.

Specifically, at BWI, I have *NEVER* had a problem getting through security. Between the TWO most convenient checkpoints, the longest it's ever taken me to get through has been about 25 minutes.

So to-day, when people kept INSISTING that I needed to be at BWI a full TWO HOURS before my flight, I told them they were crazy. "It's the last day of the holiday break," they said, but I ALWAYS travel on such days, and I've NEVER had a problem. Still, I decided to listen to them (thank God), and ended up getting to the airport a full 2 1/2 hours before my flight's scheduled time of departure.

And boy am I glad I listened, because WHAT A NIGHTMARE it was! The lines were short, orderly and well-run, and it took me a good TWELVE MINUTES to get though (I was delayed when they got confused about my laser pointer).

TWELVE WHOLE MINUTES!! To get though AIRPORT SECURITY?!? What has our world come to? Well, I wasn't going to stand for that kind of efficiency, and I was glad to find a conveniently-located feedback kiosk that was set up with a short survey so I could give these TSA goons a piece of my mind. It made me feel so much better to be able to tell these people what an incredible job they do (I mean, how do they sleep at night? The bastards).


So an inauspicious start to my trip, to say the least, but I'll attempt to put this indignity behind me.

Oh yeah, I'm going to Chicago (Evanston, actually) for a Nonlinear Dynamics conference. I'm presenting a poster.

I was in a store last night, and when I went up to the register, the woman at the counter said, "I bet you're from New York." Not sure if that's because of my semetic good looks or something else--I certainly do not have a New York accent--but I said, in a somewhat affronted tone, "Uh, no. I'm from Silver Spring."

AND PROUD OF IT!

In other news, Jen got her security clearance (woohoo!) and started the morning shift this morning. That meant leaving the apt by 5:30am, getting to the Metro by 6, and getting to Federal Triangle by 6:45. I went with her this morning to show my solidarity. The timing didn't work out exactly right, but we're experimenting. It's the first time since she's started the job that Jen's left before it was light out, and, I gotta say, it was really beautiful coming out of the Metro tunnel on the way back to College Park with the first rays of sunshine shining on a frozen creek outside West Hyattsville. The first snow of the season doesn't appear to have disrupted the roadways, but it sure has added some wintertime beauty to the area.

Courtesy of Allstu (I'm gonna miss it when I no longer get them):

Man throws shoe at Iraqi shoe-thrower

The highlight: "Zaidi's brother, Maithan, then chased the attacker and threw a shoe at him as he left the room."

In describing the story to Jen: "Someone threw a shoe at the guy who threw a shoe at the guy who threw a shoe at Bush."


Completely unrelated: I Love You Man is an awesome movie and is officially the first Netflix movie Jen and I have successfully watched together since we moved in together. Actually, that's kind of sad, considering we moved in together in June.

It was just pure unadulterated awesome.

I can't decide whether the crowning moment was when John Darnielle joined the opening act to perform "Alpha Omega," a song so deep into his back catalog, I hadn't heard of it (Jen, of course, had, but she's a bit more l33t than I am about these matters), or whether it was when he chewed out an obnoxious guy in the audience for requesting "Free Bird," or maybe it was when the ENTIRE AUDIENCE was singing along to "Love Love Love," or when he decided to play an extra song (before the encore), because, in his words, "I'm not ready to go."

<>However, I can definitely identify the LOW POINT for me: I am so incredibly over "This Year." The song used to really resonate for me, especially during my senior year at Kenyon, but I can finally say I'm at the point in my life where the sentiment of "If I can just make it through this year I'll be golden" no longer appeals to me--I feel that everything up to this point was preparing me for the next thing: middle school was preparing me for high school, high school for college, Kenyon for grad school... but to me, this feels like "it." I mean, I know that grad school is preparing me for a real career, but I'm living a real life. I have an apartment, I'm feeding myself, I'm getting MARRIED, for God's sake. This is real. This is life. And the idea of living it for "next year" just seems silly.

Not sure how many of you out there watch Castle (you should, by the way, because it's AWESOME), but last night was their Halloween episode. As the episode opens, the protagonist, novelist Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) is trying on a Halloween costume--suspenders, revolvers... brown coat. He comes out of his bedroom to a bewildered look on his daughter's face.

"What are you supposed to be?"
"A space cowboy."
"There are no cows in space. Besides, didn't you wear that, like, five years ago? It's time to move on."

 I've never been to a webcomics expo before. I've been to a BRIDAL expo and a PHYSICS expo, and I've wanted to go to a webcomics one for a while, but I've never had the chance.

Now I get to! The Small Press Expo is being held this weekend in Bethesda, right outside White Flint station, which is super-easy for me to get to (straight shot on the C8). It's really exciting--I've been reading a lot of the exhibitors for years, and now I get to actually "meet" them.

My must-see list is as follows:

Kate Beaton of history-themed awesomeness
John Campbell of Pictures for Sad Children
Joe Comeau and Emily Horne of A Softer World
Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak
Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content (will probably skip if too crowded)
Jon Rosenberg of Goats (my first and favorite webcomic)

In other webcomics-related stuff, after the LJ-RSS-feed glitch of last week, I've switched all my webcomics over to Google Reader. At first, I thought it would mean that I'd never check my LJ any more and thus miss out on all the updates from my actual friends. In actuality, I'm checking my LJ almost as much, and now that there's no webcomics on the page, I actually NOTICE my friends' entries. 

 So, my responsibilities right now are the following:

Prof: "How many of you were math majors as undergrads?"
(several hands go up)
Prof: "Shit."

---


Prof: "Some notational issues:"
(writes on the board) 1 = -1 = sqrt(2) = pi = e
Prof: "But with my handwriting, you won't be able to tell them apart, anyway."

---

Prof: "If the order of differentiation matters, it's called the math department."



It kinda sucks that I've got 2-3 hours of back-to-back physics Monday, Wednesday and Friday (with 1.5 hours of physics Tuesday/Thursday) but at least I'll always be done by noon.

Got an email this morning from a fellow Kenyon physics major.


"Hey Everyone,

I hope you're all beginning to settle in to your post-Kenyon
endeavors. I wanted to share with you a small story from this summer
that I though you might appreciate. I was scrolling through the guide
menu on my TV looking for shows on one evening not too long ago, when
I came across a peculiar name for a show. I saw a half hour segment of
"Gilad's Bodies in Motion." I though to myself, "self this is strange.
This would be the perfect title for one of Gili's 140 review
sessions." I went ahead and went to the channel and looked at the show
description only to be disappointed to find that bodies in motion were
in fact human bodies not point particles to model projectiles. It
turns out this was a fitness channel. The point of this story is
two-fold. 1) Should physics not work out for Gili he'll always have
personal training as a second option. 2) Should physics work out for
Gili, he'll need to be careful not to title a course "Gilad's Bodies
in Motion" for copyright reasons.


Take care everyone, and good luck,"

Generally, it's not good to do something like watch a movie or play a video game while you're waiting for your code to run, since doing such tasks takes away processor resources from the code you're running. But I think it'd be all right if I played some StarCraft--the system requirement for the game is a *90* MHz processor. Ha! I use more than that checking my email!

I just finished The Eyre Affair, which is officially the first novel I have read--to completion--for pleasure in quite some time.

Very much enjoyed it; I've started on the sequel.

I used to be such an avid reader as a kid; it upsets me that I haven't been reading more. I hope this is just the beginning of my return to bibliophilia.

Jen's PODS unit arrived yesterday, filled with most of her stuff, including 47 boxes of books, five bookshelves, a king-sized mattress and a loom. The job of unloading the unit fell on me, Jen and Jen's parents. To make matters worse, there's no adequate parking by our apartment building, so the pod was parked waay over at the other end of the complex, so moving in her stuff was a two step process: move it from the pod to Jen's car and her parents' minivan, then unload the cars and bring the stuff up to our third-floor apartment.

Jen's father and I, being the two manly men of the party, were tasked with the moving of the large furniture; I can't decide which was harder, the mattress or the loom, but pictures of the former will probably be posted to our Facebook in the coming days.

We started unloading at around noon and weren't finished until 9pm. But we got it all done, and that's pretty phenomenal.

Can't say it was fun, but it was all worth it to be able to sleep on a REAL BED and be able to permanently put away our air mattresses, and while my legs were killing me last night, I woke up this morning feeling strangely fine. No aching muscles, no weariness... Hey, I'm not complaining.

 

So here's the deal: Jen and I decided to go with Verizon DSL instead of Comcast, the premise being that we were gonna cut down on the evil factor. So we purchased it two weeks ago Thursday, they said it'd be activated in 1-7 days, which meant there was a decent chance it would be online by the time I moved in the following Sunday.

I get there, and there's a UPS slip that said we missed delivery of the router. Fine, okay. My parents have to take me to the UPS shipping depot in Laurel to pick it up (since there's no guarantee I would have been home for the second or third attempts). So on Tuesday I get the router, set it up... and discover my service hasn't been activated yet, and, in fact, it WON'T be activated until... Thursday.

Fine, okay. So I got unlucky with the whole 1-7 days thing. Thursday rolls around, it's STILL not activated. I call Verizon, they say there's some sort of problem with my service, and they'll get back to me. Friday rolls around, I call them back (they never actually got back to me), and they said, "Oh, nonono. It should all be good." I insist that it's NOT, they tell me they'll get back to me and might have to send out a repair tech on Monday (to-day). I'm grumpy, but what can I do?

I call them back later in the day on Friday to check in. They say the problem isn't on their end, and they'll need to send out a tech after all. I ask them on what time Monday should I be expecting the tech, and they tell me that, oh no, the tech won't be arriving 'till TUESDAY (to-morrow)!

This is absolutely WONDERFUL, considering JEN IS MOVING IN TO-MORROW!! So in addition to all the stress of moving her stuff in, we're ALSO gonna have to worry about a Verizon guy who will be coming "some time before 7pm."

But the bottom line is, it's been a WEEK since I moved in, and whenever I'm in my apartment, I don't have internet. Luckily, my University of Maryland network account is up-and-running, so I can use internet while at the office, but, considering my "work" right now is teaching myself all about Lyapunov Exponents, if I had INTERNET, I could be DOING IT FROM HOME!!! Plus, it's been a bunch of lonely nights, what without the comfort of Google LiveJournal and Washingtonpost.com (on the plus side, I have managed to get Wikipedia Offline)

For years, my pseudonym / screen name / etc. has been Antar (as in, the name of this blog).

After doing a Wikipedia search on the name, I feel I should make it abundantly clear:

The name comes from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Symphony No. 2 "Antar", which melodically chronicles the tale of the great 6th century Arabic Warrior-Poet Antarah ibn Shaddad.

It IN NO WAY references the home planet of the main characters from the 1999-2002 teen drama Roswell and associated young adult novels.

I think I need to go take a shower....

Wow, this is gonna be weird: I'm done traveling for the forseeable future.

No more flights to Austin or back and forth to Gambier.

My home, my work, my school and my fiancee* are now all in the same place.

That is kind of crazy.

*Technically, fiancee arrives in a week-and-a-half...

 http://wonkette.com/408962/fox-news-asks-commenters-to-write-funny-questions-they-would-ask-obama

although, to me, this isn't NEARLY as bad as:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052200793.html

Say what you will about liberals--they don't make racist comments and ban conservative organizations.

<>I would need to re-watch the opening LHC scene to get a better sense for the scientific accuracy, but it was pretty cool, regardless. Just a couple of things I need to note:

-There was the line in there about the LHC not being meant for antimatter production. That struck me as false at first; after all, most cyclotrons (like Fermilab's Tevatron) work by colliding protons with antiprotons (antiprotons = antimatter). But then I remembered that the LHC is unique in that it's a proton-proton beam, so that's actually probably correct.
-Actually, the big deal in the movie wasn't the production of antimatter, but the production of LARGE AMOUNTS of antimatter. Wikipedia says the LHC can produce 10,000,000 anti-protons each second (that's 1.67x10^-19 kg--a VERY SMALL amount, whereas they were producing actual visible amounts of antimatter (see below).
-The physics-lady at one point says the canister had the explosive yield of a 5 kilotons of TNT. One kt of TNT = 4.184x10^12 J. Assuming 100% efficiency in turning matter into energy, we can solve E=mc^2 for m to get: there was ~233 mg of antimatter in that canister. At current rates of production, it would take the LHC 44 MILLION years to produce enough antiprotons for just ONE of those canisters.


-The explosion: forgetting the whole fireball / implosion / blinding flash of light thing, assuming proton-antiproton collisions,  you wouldn't get the same fiery spectrum you'd get in your usual bomb--all the energy released would be in the form of 938 MeV photons (1.3 fm or 1 millionth-of-a-nanometer wavelength light). That's high, high, HIGH energy gamma rays and, as such, I would imagine that, if you were close enough to get hit by the concussive shockwave, you should have been close enough to be SEVERELY, probably FATALLY irradiated by those beams. Lemme see if I can work out the calculation:
-From XCOM, the 938 MeV photon cross section of water (of which we mostly are) is 0.0202 cm^2/g. Water has a density of 1 g/cm^3, so that gives a linear absorbtion coefficient of 0.0202 cm^-1. Assume the helicopter got up to 10,000 ft (a pretty generous assumption). Then the surface energy density at ground-level would be 179 kJ/m^2. Assume the person is standing up (not lying down) so has a height of 2 meters and a "cross section" of 0.05 m^2. Then, of the 8.95 kJ incident on each person, 98% (8.8 kJ) will be absorbed. Assuming a weight of 100 kg, that's a radiation dose of 88 Grays. That's an instantly fatal dose, looks like. Nice job, Dan Brown. You just killed EVERYONE.

Oh, and by the way, I GOT ENGAGED!!!!!

My warranty on Scheherazade, my Dell laptop and primary computer, expires next month. It's one hell of a warranty, covering not just normal wear & tear, but "accidents" up to--but not including--fire & flood.

I just had her serviced a few weeks ago to fix a crack in her screen casing. About a week after the servicing, when I tried to replace her hard drive (for upgrade purposes--not because the HD was failing, as far as I could tell), the plastic cover that makes it so the HD case is flush with the rest of the laptop broke clean off. Since I was graduating, I couldn't get a Dell tech to come out before I left Gambier, so he's showing up to-day in MD.

But YESTERDAY, all of a sudden, my CD drive has stopped working.

So everything on my poor baby laptop seems to be breaking down at the same time...

...but it's RIGHT BEFORE the warranty expires, not RIGHT AFTER, which is what USUALLY happens with me and my electronics items.


Dell offers a one-year warranty extension, and if it's reasonably priced, I'll probably take it. I've pretty much decided that Scheherazade will be my last "desktop replacement" laptop and that she'll be replaced by a Linux workstation or Mac Pro (read: really powerful tower) and a Dell Mini 9 "laptot" (a.k.a. "netbook"), but I won't be able to afford to buy those new computers for quite some time. So until then, I'll still be pretty reliant on Scheherazade, and, if it makes any fiscal sense, I should keep her under warranty.

I had no idea that blip.fm was posting all my blips not just as Twitters, but as LJs. THAT is annoying. Now that I think about it, though, what the Hell was I *expecting* them to do with the account I added?!?

Then again, I kind of have a thing for melodically beautiful but lyrically nonsensical tunes.

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that this song makes absolutely ZERO sense, lyrically, but I like it anyway.

Ha! Okay, this service officially rocks if they have THIS of all songs.

And this would be the first.

Just playing around at this point; this song would be the 2nd song I've heard on a commercial that made me buy the whole album from (shudder) MySpace.

The best quantum physics joke I've ever heard came from... Seth Macfarlane?

"Heisenberg's wife was unsatisfied because when he had the time he didn't have the energy, and when he had the position, he didn't have the momentum."

Closed out my People's Bank of Gambier account to-day.

Guess I'll never get to hear that Scottish ATM voice again...

Submitted via the Subway website...

 To whom it may concern: I have just returned from purchasing a 12" turkey & pepperoni sub from one of your Mt. Vernon, OH locations (the one OUTSIDE the Wal-Mart, rather than inside). I am composing this message since the establishment did not have a comment card box.

The turkey-pepperoni 12" had long been a staple of my diet, back in my young and heady high school days. But these days, as a college senior in rural Ohio, I vastly prefer to spend my money at local establishments than to schlep over to the neighboring town to get mere "fast food."

For four years, I can't say I missed it; my college town has a local deli and many other fine dining establishments, and nothing--certainly not the TV ads featuring dancing/singing idiots--made me even once think I was missing anything.

But then, two weeks ago, I found myself watching Chuck, one of my favorite currently-airing shows. In that episode, one character attempts to butter up another--a rather large fellow by the name of Big Mike--with a footlong chicken teriyaki sub. In the scene, the delicious sandwich is shown in all its glistening, meaty glory as Big Mike devours his favorite food. Now, I've never had a subway chicken teriyaki sub. But watching that scene made me remember MY favorite subway sandwich, made me remember my minimum-wage high school job (working for a dry cleaner's), made me remember how I HATED that job, made me remember how the ONLY THING that motivated me to go to work each day was that I would get myself one of those mouth-watering turkey & pepperoni sandwiches (eating half right away, and saving half for my mid-shift break). I remembered how the turkey and pepperoni complemented each other so perfectly, how the olives--bathed in honey mustard--added just the right variation, how the freshly-baked, never frozen Italian Herbs & Cheese bread would crunch. I remembered dripping honey mustard on myself and staining oh, so many pairs of pants. In that short scene, all those memories came flooding back, and I thought to myself, God, I want some Subway.

I'm graduating this year and moving back to a more civilized region, one where chain restaurants aren't a 15-minute car ride away. I'm heading off to become a poor grad student, and $5 will be approximately my daily lunch budget. Now that I've tasted that juicy goodness once again, I know where that $5-a-day is going. And it won't be to McDonald's.

The purpose of my writing this, Subway corporation, is to try to convince you of the good that Chuck has done for your business. I am sure my story is far from unique. And while I'm not going to say that that one scene is somehow saving your corporation (I don't imagine you're doing particularly poorly), I am saying that it was THE most effective Subway advertisement I've ever seen, and it reawakened a long-dormant craving in someone who used to be one of your most regular customers. You should implore NBC to renew Chuck, if at the very least, for the promise of more such ads to come.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sandwich to finish.

 Oh, shiny, shiny interface. Oh, Omnibox. On "Speed Dial" home screen. How I missed you.

I've switched back to Google Chrome, and this time, I think it's for good.

As I described so long ago, the main reason I switched away in the first place was lack of Flashblock. In addition, I was worried about trivial things like "security" and "speed."

Regarding security, I realize the master password is kind of silly for Chrome's user experience. And if I consistently lock my screen when I go away from my computer, it's not something I have to worry about. In terms of vulnerability to attacks, I think the results of pwn2own speak for themselves.

Regarding speed, those weird slow-downs I'd experienced seem to no longer be a problem, at least in Chrome 2.0 beta. Part of that might be that this version of Chrome has somehow been made EVEN FASTER in terms of Javascript execution, but I think the real answer lies below:

Chrome 2.0 has support for add-ons. And while everything's still very much in beta, some wonderful, wonderful souls (scroll to the bottom, to the "answer" by ChromeFreak) have taken to making a version of Flashblock. The interface is a bit clunky (Shift-F to whitelist a site; hunt down a cookie to remove it from the whitelist), but by-God, it works (for instructions on installing an extension in Chrome 2.0, click here).

So I'm rejoicing in the glory that is un-dockable tabs, Google Docs integration and sandboxed processes (ooh! Looks like they've added custom dictionary support!)

P.S. I swear, I *am* working on my Honors. I just implemented three chapters worth of corrections. So I'm taking a teeny break.

Jeez... it's grown a lot since the days when I just read Goats and Overcompensating...

(Arranged roughly in order of when I started reading them regularly)

Goats
Overcompensating
Wigu
xkcd
Questionable Content
Dominic Deegan
Dr. McNinja
Perry Bible Fellowship
Non Sequitur
Pearls Before Swine
Tom Toles
Dresden Codak
Action at a Distance (if only we were actually UPDATING it...)
Pictures for Sad Children
A Softer World
Piled High and Deeper
Schlock Mercenary
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Kate Beaton
Darths and Droids
Abstruse Goose

And yet, I STILL don't feel like I have enough webcomicky goodness in the morning.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/tomtoles/?name=Toles&date=04092009&type=c

Couldn't have drawn it better myself.

Nice job, Iowa and Vermont.

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=423

The alt-text makes this for me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/health/research/06brain.html

Had this article come out nine months ago, and had I been STARTING my research in the place it is now, there's a good chance my Honors would have gone in a completely different direction.

(For those that don't know, my Honors thesis is on studying synchronization in simulated neural networks. In layman's terms, I'm giving seizures to a simulated brain)

After I wrote up my summary of my three weeks with Google Chrome, someone pointed out to me that it was WAAY too long and involved, and that she doubted many people would read it.

I shrugged and agreed.

But, you know what, I'm glad I posted it, because *I* just forgot why I switched back to Firefox: primarily, NO FLASHBLOCK.

Google has just recently announced a comprehensive system for implementing extensions in Chrome v2, but until then, I guess I'm stuck with Firefox...

Too bad. I was really impressed by the results of this year's pwn2own.

-G

A long, long time ago (2/24/08, evidently, according to my Gmail) one of the webcomics I read had a link to this wonderful, beautiful Youtube music video:



and, for some reason, to-day, I became DETERMINED to find out just who it was that introduced me to what's actually become one of my favorite songs of all time. I was pretty sure it was either Kate Beaton or Dresden Codak, but I wasn't sure which. Nor was I sure when I would've seen it, since I read through each of their archives only AFTER being introduced to them. I first tried going through the Dresden Codak archives, since it's pretty small, and it wasn't there. Then I tried google searching with the "site:beatonna.livejournal.com" flag to no avail. At long last, I actually hunted down the Youtube video itself, and--lo and behold--Youtube lists the top 5 linkers, and #1 and #2 were... Dresden Codak.

Turns out, he'd linked to it off the main page, which has since been changed. MY POINT in doing all this was that I wanted to email the person responsible and thank them. I think I'll go do that now.

A bit about the video: it's a song called "My Children Be Joyful" by the band Rock Plaza Central off their album "Are We Not Horses?" The album is *I think* a concept album about robot horses (or so Pitchfork says), yet the song is this beautifully upbeat, joyous song. I think in its original placement in the album, it was meant to be ironic, but in this case, the video is this cheerful exerpt from a Canadian children's show called Nanlan. It's so cute, and it's so happy, that watching it can't help but put me into a happy mood.

That's all, I guess.

I've been twittering a lot. Very easy to do on the iPod Touch.

http://abstrusegoose.com/40

The word of the night is Golgafrinchan.

Yep. Golgafrinchan.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it would be potentially bad for me to explain it to you.

I just got myself a twitter account. The thought was, maybe I'll be more inclined to update things about my life if I'm limited to 140 characters...

http://twitter.com/antar05

I don't think this'll mean a decrease in the frequency of my LJ posts, but my update rate is pretty low to begin with.

http://southwest.com/landing/wifi_access.html?int=HOMEWNEW0200WIFI090308

Holy. Heck.

http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2009/02/25/pwn2own-2009

Basically, it's a contest that puts up a Macbook, a Linux laptop and a Windows laptop--all in default and fully-patched configurations--and says to hackers, if you can hack it, it's yours.

(Last year, the Mac was hacked immediately and the Linux machine was the only one to survive unscathed).

This year, they've also put up an Android, a Blackberry and an iPhone.

I wish I knew how to hack... not because I would, but because I'd know better how to protect myself.*




*That's my story and I'm sticking to it

I actually really DESPISE the term "nerdgasm." Alas, it's appropriate here.

One of my favorite things about working in Linux is the default graphical text editor, which is called gedit. For all you Windows people out there, it's more sophisticated than notepad, but not quite as intense as wordpad. What's really neat about it--from my perspective--is that if you open a piece of programming code, it'll auto-detect the language and correctly color-code and highlight appropriate syntax. Also, it prints really sexy.

But it's a pretty exclusively Linux thing... or so I thought.

Long ago, I'd found this website, which gives instructions on how to build gedit on Windows from source, and on more than one occasion, I'd actually attempted to do it, but, like a loser, I'd always given up before I got very far (I think I was having problems with SVN and the Kenyon firewall).

But what I'd NEVER noticed was that, if you scroll all the way down, THEY HAVE PRE-BUILT BINARIES (read: installers for stupid people)!!!! I feel like such a moron, but I'm too ecstatic to be too upset (which is actually the theme of my week).

So now I've installed gedit on my laptop (actually, "Boris," my old Scientific Computing laptop I'm borrowing for a while), and it's simply glorious (actually, I'm having an issue with the printing, but I'm working on it).

I was recently walking up to the dining hall from the KAC and was thinking about the calories I must be burning just doing that climb (for those that don't know, the Kenyon Athletic Center is down a big hill from the rest of campus). And, being a physicist, I realized I could actually *estimate* how many calories I was burning, if I just considered my gain in gravitational potential energy from climbing a hill.

I weigh about 170 lbs, which is on the order of 100 kg.

Hard to really estimate elevation, but I figured that hill has to be at least 30 meters.

With gravity at ~10 m/s, that makes W=mgh = 100 kg * 10 m/s * 30 m = 30 kJ.

Now, I didn't exactly remember how much a calorie was, compared to a Joule, but-as it recall--it was on the same order of magnitude.

So that means, to climb that hill, I have to burn off AT LEAST 30,000 calories? Huh? That makes ZERO sense! I mean, just CLIMBING UP A FLIGHT OF STAIRS should take about 5,000 calories, by that rationale!

This really was upsetting me--how the HECK could I be burning more calories in a climb up the stairs than I eat in two days?!?
<>
I looked it up online. 1 calorie does in fact equal 4.18 J. But what the people who write nutrition information call a calorie is ACTUALLY a kilocalorie: 1,000 calories! If something doesn't make sense, it probably means someone or something is lying to you. Anyway, I'm off to start on my daily 2 MILLION calorie diet.

I'm curious--who out there knew the answer without reading the cut? Hint: Google Calculator says 1 calorie = 4.18 J.

Thanks, orangetango , for tipping me off.

http://www.mountain-goats.com/archives/2009/01/harmonic-conver.html

I am seriously flipping my shit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011402602.html?hpid%3Dartslot&sub=AR

Or, if you don't feel like registering with the Washington Post...

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-montalban15-2009jan15,0,4189863.story

http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=RB-PLUMBERS&Category_Code=RB-SHIRTS

As an aside, the last of my grad school applications has been submitted. Woohoo!

This is a piece of documentation I've written for, well, myself. I'm sick of having to remember just which assorted pieces of documentation I used to get my iPod all nice and jailbroken-y.

So here's what I do. These directions work for upgrading to v2.2 from an earlier firmware, as well as RESTORING to v2.2. I make the assumption that the user (me) already has a jailbroken device and would like his/her app data saved, both AppStore apps and Cydia apps*. These directions are also for PC only.

*Okay, well, SOME of your Cydia apps. See below.

1. Prepare for the reload
a. If you made your own theme for Winterboard, make sure either you have it on your computer or use your favorite SCP client to retrieve it from /Library/Themes/
a. If you use the Categories app, go into Poof and un-hide all your applicaions
b. If you use the five-item dock, remove one (not sure whether this is needed, but meh).
c. Install AptBackup from Cydia and hit "Backup"
d. In iTunes, delete any previous backups of the iPod, then right-click on the device in the iTunes sidebar and hit "Backup." This will force iTunes to do a full backup.

2. Reload!
a. Shift-click on "Restore" and select the desired firmware. Let Apple do its thing.
b. When prompted, allow iTunes to restore the iPod from the backup you just made.
c. iTunes will then proceed to begin reinstalling your apps, music, etc. via sync. Let it. It's no longer the case that the jailbreaking method will proceed to wipe everything.
d. Download QuickPWN (do a Google search). Run it. Follow the directions. Note that--for the interactive phase--you'll be holding down the HOME button throughout (DON'T LET GO!!!) Also, it helps if the iPod is not in its dock but connected directly via the USB cable (mainly because holding down HOME too tight may knock it loose.
e. Go to Cydia, install AptBackup, and hit "Restore."
f. Using your favorite SCP client, copy your custom Winterboard theme back to /Library/Themes/

Not only should iTunes have successfully backed up your app data for your AppStore apps, but--amazingly--your configuration information for your Cydia apps should be good, too! Well, some of them, at least. Winterboard seems to remember which theme you used. Poof will continue to hide any apps you forgot to un-hide... but Reminder didn't remember my settings, BossPrefs thought I was loading it for the first time, and Categories didn't remember anything, either, so I don't know. Looks like Winterboard and Poof are the exceptions, not the rules.

http://a3d.comicgenesis.com

The teaser for Series 4 of my webcomic, Action at a Distance, goes up to-night at midnight.

Series 4, itself, begins a week later.

-G

After a two-year hiatus, Action at a Distance, the webcomic written by me and illustrated by Ben Wright-Heuman, the webcomic for which this blog is named, HAS RETURNED!!!

Well, is returning. New story begins Jan. 5, and I've got enough completed material to run until V-day (in the old update schedule: every day for as long as the storyline takes, then a week break), with more being drawn as I type.

So, woohoo!

(http://xkcd.com/214)

When this comic first appeared a few months ago, I chuckled, immediately recognizing that I do this kind of thing all the time. But I don't think I've ever encountered a better example as the Wikipedia Chain I just went through:

The Boondocks (TV Series) -- Was looking up when the television show "The Boondocks" was set to return
The Boondocks (Comic Strip) -- Wondered what ever happened to the comic strip
Michael Caesar -- Wondered when Huey's best friend from the comic was going to make his first appearance on the show (original rumors had it as season 2)
The dozens -- mentioned in the previous article; forgot what it was
Avoidance speech (mother-in-law languages) -- a "See Also." Was really curious what it was
Newspeak -- another "See Also." Skimmed the article to see if there was any scientific basis for Orwell's postulate that simplifying language simplifies thought
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -- turns out, the idea pre-dates Orwell. And the jury's still out on the cause and effect


Btw, while I don't really approve of the concept of LJ memes, I would be curious to see if other people would be willing to document some interesting Wikipedia chains they've gone through.

Okay, so earlier to-day, I had a conversation with my roommate in which he states that he doesn't think Rap is music. He says, if it's not singing, it's not music.

So I ask him what he thinks of Cake.

He says, "I love cake. I like it a lot better than pie."

I give him an annoyed look. He acts incredulous.

I say, "I meant the BAND."

He doesn't get it.

I go into iTunes and start playing "Short Skirt / Long Jacket."

He says, "What does 'Chuck' have to do with this?"

::forehead-smack::



(for those of you who don't know, the TV Show Chuck uses "Short Skirt / Long Jacket" for its main theme--THAT is a personally reasonable thing not to know)

Alas, it appears that the fear-mongering has even penetrated into our Linux boxes.



OMG! PANIC PANIC! YOU'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!!

(or someone just changed their RSA key)



Yeah, I changed my RSA key.

Sorry.

False alarm.

Everyone go home.

No, it's okay, officer. I just changed my RSA key. But thanks, though.

As I set about re-importing my iTunes library into my Windows iTunes (I'd been using my Mac to do all my music stuff, but I didn't feel like bringing it home over Thanksgiving break, so...), one songs refuses to import:

01 Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois _ The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You're Going To Have To Leave Now,.mp3

(I should point out that this isn't even the full name of the song)

The file name is too long. Windows has NO IDEA what to do with it! It can't delete it, rename it, move it...

Oh, Sufjan Stevens... curse you and your insanely long song titles...

I took this photo at about 6:30am this (I mean, jeez--YESTERDAY morning), as I waited for the polls to open in Gambier, OH. At this point, the line was already beginning to snake around the community center. I know I could have (very easily) early-voted, but frankly, I don't know if I'll ever again have the opportunity to go to the polls election day (depending on where I go to grad school, etc. etc.), and I wanted the experience. Unfortunately, I don't think my poor cell phone camera did an adequate job of capturing the sheer beauty of the moment, but whatever. That's enough sappy symbolism for one election cycle...

Because this information should be out in the aether. The concert was incredible, and it was totally worth flying all the way to Austin, just for the weekend (there were other incentives for the trip, though, of course...)

The Opening Act, The Petticoat Junkies, were pretty awful. As Jen says, "Tolerable music with unbearable lyrics." I'm sorry, but it's never a good idea to sing a song in which abortion is referred to as "the mother's shame" at a show in Austin.

<>Kaki King:
Bone Chaos
Life Being What It Is
So Much for So Little
Pull Me Out
Jessica
Be Afraid
Pink Noise
Goby
Night After Sidewalk
Montreal
Saving Days
Yellow Cake
2:00
Soft Shoulder
Can Anyone
Dogs and Horses

<>The Mountain Goats:
Have to Explode
Heretic Pride
The Mess Inside
The House That Dripped Blood
Moon over Goldsboro
New Zion
Dinu Lipatti's Bones
You or Your Memory
So Desperate
Black Pear Tree (w/ Kaki King)
When I Bring My Curses Home (w/ Kaki King)
Mosquito Repellant (w/ Kaki King)
Suedehead (Morrissey cover) (w/ Kaki King)
Supergenesis (w/ Kaki King)
San Bernadino
In The Craters On The Moon
Game Shows Touch Our Lives
See America Right
House Guest (encore)
This Year (encore)

I have no more commentary to offer, because I am just so blown away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/weekinreview/05schwartz.html?_r=1&no_interstitial&oref=slogin

Etymology is cool...

After three weeks with Google Chrome as my default browser (I made the switch the day after it was released), I'm switching back to Firefox.

It's been a great three weeks, and I'm gonna miss a lot of things about Google's browser, but it's time to switch back.

<>Why I tried it in the first place:
-It was new and shiny
-It was made by Google, and I'm a total sucker for anything Google does. If T-Mobile worked in Gambier, I would absolutely go out and buy a Google Phone.
-I liked the philosophy: complete redesign of the whole web browser concept, and all that.

<>Why I'm switching back to Firefox
-Security: I'm not talking about the various exploits that have surfaced in the past three weeks, what I'm talking about is the fact that the password manager DOESN'T HAVE A MASTER PASSWORD!!!
-"Niceness:" There's a technical term for describing how a computer prioritizes all the processes currently running. On Unix systems, this is done via "nice" values, so it's technically a misnomer to talk about "niceness" in Windows, but whatever. ANYway, one of the biggest differences in Chrome is that each tab runs as a separate process. For computers that have multiple processors (read: not mine), this will greatly improve performance without resorting to kludgy methods like multithreading. On single-processor systems, the operating system is supposed to divvy up the number of "cycles" each second fairly among processes with the same niceness, but--and I don't know whether this is actually Google's fault, or whether it's something about Windows--oftentimes, my system would grind to a halt because ONE Google tab was working on something hard. This is different from, in say, Firefox, when if one tab was working on something hard, only all of FIREFOX would grind to a halt. This was especially marked when I would try to download something or listening to Pandora
-No custom dictionary support for spell check: I'm sick and tired of Chrome telling me my name is spelled wrong. Every other spell checker I've ever used (and I'm not even limiting myself to browsers) give you that handy "Add to Dictionary" option.
-Flashblock: If you don't have Flashblock installed on Firefox, you should, because it's awesome. Working from the assumption that almost all the annoying ads and potential malware you'll encounter on the web is flash-based, the Flashblock plugin will refuse to render any flash, unless you tell it to explicitly (by clicking on a little flash icon). You can also white-list sites (meaning "go ahead and render any flash this site tells you to"), which is handy for banking sites that have hidden flash, such that if the flash doesn't run, the page won't load. Google Chrome doesn't have the same add-on capabilities (yet), so no flashblock, meaning lots and lots of flash. Yech.
-Ultimately, browsing philosophy: I use Firefox in, essentially, Paranoia Mode. Sure, I allow it to remember passwords, but I keep all that behind a master password. Clear history, cache, cookies (except for a select few) upon closing. No flash without my explicit approval. You just CAN'T operate Chrome in that frame of mind. I'm not talking physically--you can do all the same personal-info clearing things (at least, I think), but so many of the excellent features of Chrome have to do with it optimizing itself to your browsing habits and keeping your history. It's a totally different experience, but, in the end, I think I'm more comfortable sacrificing convenience for paranoia. At least for now.

<>Things I will miss:
-The Omnibox: one box to rule them all--whether you're typing in addresses or searching. It was intuitive, it was wonderful. It was also a *little* buggy (especially when trying to get it to use Google Calculator and not type in a web address or search), but now that I'm back in Firefox, I'm totally having to readjust to using that corner search bar.
-The Download manager: SO SHINY! And it's a tab, not a little pop-up sized Window like in Firefox. And since it was a full-sized tab, it gave details and control that the Firefox one simply cannot, due to lack of space
-The "Speed Dial" home page: nine of your most frequently-visited pages arranged in a neat little grid. Especially handy for getting to Kenyon's wireless authentication page, as Firefox will tend to struggle for a bit to load the Google home page before it gives up and allows itself to be redirected to wireless.kenyon.edu
-Fast JavaScript execution: not that you usually notice this kind of thing, but Chrome's Java interpreter is supposed to be something like two orders of magnitude better than competing browsers.
And, of course, there are dozens of other little things--the look, the feel--that I can't really describe, but that I'm absolutely going to miss.

All this being said, I'm going to continue to follow the news about Chrome and anxiously await their next release. Because Chrome has potential, and I would love to switch back, and switch permanently. But for now, I just feel that it's not ready, or rather, that I'm not ready for it.

...but that doesn't stop me from thinking this is totally awesome:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94658968&ft=1&f=1001

When I was a freshman, macs made up, at most, 1/3 of body of student computing.

This was back in the day of the iMac G4, which cost 1.5x to 2x as much as a comparably-powered PC laptop. This was also back in the day when they'd finally worked out most of the bugs (that they were ever gonna work out) for Windows XP.

In the intervening three years, Macs have gotten cheaper (at $1200, the into-level MacBook is cheaper than a lot of Dells! And the Mac Mini? Forget about it!), and Microsoft had introduced about the WORST POSSIBLE PRODUCT they ever could have. I've heard some IT people saying it's almost as bad as Windows Me. And, while Dell will still sell you XP if you twist their arms hard enough, if you're getting a new PC, dollars to donuts, it's gonna be Vista.

So, is it really that surprising that, of the 1,033 computers currently connected to the Kenyon residential network, that this is the breakdown:

306 Windows XP (30%)
153 Windows Vista (15%)
570 Mac OS X (55%)
4 Linux or unknown (0.4%)

Macs outnumber Vista machines nearly four to one. Now, while that's not a valid comparison, since a lot of those Macs pre-date Vista, it's still incredibly shocking, at least to me, that the Mac-PC split is 55-45.

Microsoft, you HAD the market! It was your game to lose. And you lost. Big time.

[Update: with 1453 users...
388 XP (27%)
247 Vista (17%)
810 Mac OS X (56%)
8 Linux (0.6%)]

If you like webcomics, and you're not currently reading Dresden Codak, well, you should. Because it's awesome.

But it's also extremely frustrating.

While most of the comics I read update daily, or at least semi-regularly, DC updates *maybe* once-a-month, which is a bit frustrating, considering how arc-driven the comic currently is.

But about a month ago, he posted this comic (done by the amazing Kate Beaton*), and I feared we wouldn't be seeing the dramatic conclusion of the current story-arc for many a moon.

BUT HE'S POSTED A NEW PAGE!!!! I guess he's healed a bit.

I am very happy. And I also feel like an awful person: Oh, you got in a horrible, crippling bike accident? I'm sorry. That's sad. Does that mean no more webcomic?

*Kate Beaton, by the way, is absolutely awesome, as well. Her webcomic blog is to history what XKCD** is to math & science. History Projects #1 and #2 are the ones that have gotten the attention, but personally, my favorite series is "Conversations with a Younger Self."

**If you've never heard of XKCD, well then, I'm just gonna give up.

My summer program's done, and I'm off in Austin, TX for a week-and-a-half.

Woke up this morning, leisurely (Jen had already left for work), check my emails, and I got an email from an eBay member, asking if I wanted that refund after all on the Nokia n80 PDA I'd apparently won from her.

Huh. That's strange. I didn't buy no PDA. Naturally, the first thing I suspected was fraud, so I click the auction URL so I can get into my eBay account and see what's going on. I click the link and put in my username and password.

Only, just a little too late, I notice a couple of things: Firefox hasn't asked to auto-fill my account info, which is odd, since it always does for eBay. Second, the URL STARTS with http://signin.ebay.com, but it then continues on from there. And I know enough of how domain names work to know that you work backwards. Meaning www.google.com means the "www" server of "google" which is part of the ".com" of internet stuff.

Anyway, it logs in, stays on a screen for a split second that says the auction cannot be found, then it kicks me to the main eBay page, which is not registering me as logged in.

Uh oh. I think I've just been scammed.

To verify, I try clicking the link again and entering an INCORRECT username and password. It STILL lets me through, confirming my suspicions.

Upon further investigation, I see that the email is actually from aw-confirm@ebayinc.com

ebayinc.com DOESN'T EXIST!!!

Other than that, the email looks 100% legit, looks EXACTLY like any number of similar--legit--emails I've received from eBay. Only other difference is that instead of saying Dear , it says Dear . Pretty crafty bastards. Gotta say.

So now I'm going through my various accounts, changing my passwords. I've also reported the scam to eBay.

What a way to begin the day.

Parts I and II of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog were so amazing? Why'd you have to end it like you did?

Boo...

I mean, it FIT. I'm not saying it wasn't poorly executed and everything, but SO CLICHE, and, if you ask me (you didn't), so inappropriate for what it seemed like Parts I and II were trying to accomplish.

Boo...

I may have to go back to letting George Lucas be my master (after all, Indy IV was fairly good).

I may or may not have taken the Metro to-day all the way out to Foggy Bottom, just so I could run into Trader Joe's and buy four jars of their Wasabi Mayo...

...but I will readily admit admit that he's written some truly amazing stories.

If, like a young Alvy Singer, you have ever been distressed by entropy and the expansion of the universe, you should absolutely read "The Last Question."

http://beatonna.livejournal.com/57906.html#cutid1

I had no idea Canada historically had such fear of the good ole US of A*.

I mean, what have we ever done to the rest of the world?

P.S. Kate Beaton is Awesome

*Wait: Yes I did.

Just saw the trailer for the 3rd Futurama movie, Bender's Game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj2VU_8l6gs


All I have to say is this:

Futurama + D&D.

O.M.G.

I think my nerddom threshold has just been exceeded, and that's saying a LOT.

[In other news, for those of you who hated Bender's Big Score, the second installment, The Beast With A Thousand Backs is considerably better.]

I'm a nerd. I really, really am.

Furthermore, I'm a n00b nerd, at least when it comes to a lot of computer stuff. There are serious gaps in my education when it comes to computing, as pretty much all I know, I've taught myself. Hey, that's what I get for going to a school that doesn't have a computer science program.

My research involves trying this new method of finding communities in networks. A classic example is Facebook. Let's say you've got a school of, say, 1,600 students (hmm...) and you're ignoring all their friend-links with people outside that school. Now, there'll be some cliques in that school, where most people in that group are friends with each other, to a higher degree than they're friends with people outside the group. Basically, there's a lot of money in coming up with methods of picking out those groups.

Okay, so, what my method does is bascially take a huge clump of network, shakes it, and hopefully the communities fall out. Ideally, they'd fall out as distinct peaks on a histogram, but there's a lot of variables involved: how long I shake the clump, how HARD I shake the clump, etc.

Now, I COULD analyze it all numerically, do a bunch of number-crunching and plotting, and come up with a number telling me if a distinct point in (parameter-)space and time was good. But what I felt would be a lot more descriptive would be to visualize everything, look at the histogram over time to see if I see those peaks, or almost-peaks, or one wide peak that looks kinda promising, and look at whether those peaks change with time, etc. This is all pretty easily done with Mathematica, and I can even do animations and shiny stuff. But then I have to use Mathematica and deal with their notebooks and the fact that when I open it in Linux, five different windows pop up. OR, as I just found out, I could use the Mathematica command-line interface, write out a script, and then hit enter.

Now, I wasted about an hour trying to figure out how to get the damn thing to take my commands, and it looks like my script may still be doing something screwy, and all the while, I reflect on the fact that if I were an actual CS person, I might actually *know what I'm doing* and not be wasting my time with all these stupid mistakes.

But, at the end of the day, fooling around with this stuff is one of my favorite things in the world to do.

I am a nerd.

So I've been riding my bike to work every day, and so far, it's been working out great.

But so, this morning, I come down to unlock my bike, and I find a tag tied to it saying that if the tag is not removed by a certain date, it will be assumed that the bike is abandoned property and will be taken to some warehouse somewhere.

Minor annoyance, but I remove the tag and get on my bike. THEN, two pedals in, the bike COMPLETELY SEIZES UP--I can't pedal forward. Luckily, it's not like I've gone anywhere or gained any appreciable speed, so I'm able to get off my bike, lie it on its side and see what's up. The chain had fallen off the gears and was now stuck between the smallest gear and the cap to the assembly (I have no idea what all this stuff is actually called). Another annoying problem, and it was a little difficult to fix, considering I had NO IDEA what I was doing. But I got the chain back onto the gear and pedaled off.

Then, after stopping before crossing the street (so my foot was down and off the pedal), in putting my foot back ON the pedal, I scraped my ankle against something, so now it's all raw and scratched up.

My bike, evidently, does not like me to-day.

But, hey. If that's the WORST stuff that happens to me to-day, that's not really so bad of a day, now is it?

Okay, so now for some personal stuff:

I am currently in my office at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I am a faculty member (or so my College ID tells me).

In actuality, I'm doing an REU (Research Experience for Undergrads--Summer Science out in the real world, for those Kenyonites out there) at the University of Maryland, under Dr. Edward Ott, who literally wrote the book on Chaos. I'm the only undergraduate in the research group, though there are nine others here as part of the TREND (Training and Research Experience in Nonlinear Dynamics), plus a bunch of people here for other REU's, other research projects and summer school. Plus, there are various conferences (people familar with Kenyon summers: You think the Unitarians or the Rainbow Girls are bad--try Odyssey of the Mind World Finals). Even without conferences, it just amazes me how--in the middle of summer, the campus is easily twice as crowded as Kenyon during its PEAK!

I'm so lucky I got this REU, since last year, I got zip and ended up working Helpline for the summer (not a bad gig, but doesn't stand out on a grad school resume), and the research project is right up my alley--computer modeling of nonperiodic networks. Currently, I'm running everything off my poor, humble 1.6 GHz Dell Inspiron (Scheherazade, for those who care), but the jobs are getting big enough that it's time to move them onto a cluster. Kenyon has really spoiled me. A year ago, if someone had told me I'd get access to an HPC Cluster (high-performance computing cluster), I would have gotten all giddy and thought it was the coolest thing in the world. But now that I've been doing stuff with Cassiopeia, Kenyon's baby (in comparison to some of the other clusters out there) 52-core Beowulf, for going on a year, I take it as a given that I'll have access to that kind of hardware.

They've put me up in the Leonardtown apartments (better than the NewApts, worse than the Tafts, 'bout the same as the Bexleys), in a suite with four other people in my program, plus a french grad student who's only here for, like, three weeks to set up some equipment (once he leaves, I've called dibs on his single), which is about a 15-minute walk or a five-minute bike ride from my office.

So far, my hours have been extremely flexible, with me coming in at 10am and leaving by 1pm (to be fair, I get lunch, go back to my room, run one of my batch jobs, go to the gym, and, when I get back, do my analysis, so it's not like I'm only working three hours a day) most days (to-day's an exception--I'm staying late to meet with someone about a computing algorithm). The trick is not getting lazy, as when I'm back in my room, the tempation to goof off / play computer games / browse the internet is strong.

It's really nice to be back in Maryalnd for the summer. I've been going home on the weekends and making plans with my high-school friends, many of whom actually go to University of Maryland. My fantasy was to spend a good amount of time exploring DC, as I'm right on a metro line, but I forgot one thing: it's DC in the summer. Right now, it's not so bad, but the weather has--by-and-large--been hot and humid as only DC can be. It's no wonder that US presidents--for the history of the US presidency--have fled the city to their various hideaways (Teddy Roosevelt had Oyster Bay, FDR had Shangri La, a.k.a. Camp David, heck, Bush chooses excessive heat over the humidity as he flees to Crawford Ranch). Still, I'm determined! My mom already took me to the Newseum (totally, totally awesome, and well-worth the steep $20 admission), my grandmother has offered to take me to the symphony, either NSO or BSO, and I'm determined to take her up on her offer.

This summer's going to be (already is) awesome (end-capped by visiting Jen in Austin), and I'm going to try to get the most out of it I can.

If you haven't already, you should go out and download Firefox 3.0 to-day from http://www.getfirefox.com, if only to try and help set a Guinness record for most downloads of a piece of software in a 24-hour period.

In recognition of the joyous day, I thought I'd post a (probably apocryphal) story I found on Wikipedia.

Firefox and IE may have their differences, but the development teams, out of necessity, have had to interact and work together on a regular basis. But, so, however long ago it was that Firefox 2.0 came out, rumor has it that the IE team sent Mozilla a congratulations cake. In reply, it was suggested that Mozilla send a cake back--with the recipe included. Oh, Open Source jokes! HiLARious!

It's 12:15 in the morning, and it's only NOW, after a way-too-busy weekend, that I'm able to do my laundry.

Only... I only have $.75 in quarters, and I need $1.50 per load, plus ~$1.25 for drying.

The bookstore and the market, I know, are closed, but that's okay, I say, I'll go to the Gund Game Room and use their change machine. After about two minutes of trying to convince the obviously-disconnected device to accept my fiver, I finally give up, head hung low.

Thank God, Jen, brilliant woman that she is, suggests I ask my roommate to spare some quarters. He's able to spare $1.75, which means I can do one load plus 40 minutes of drying. Far from ideal, but it'll do.

So I go put my laundry in and sulk back to Hillel when I see the gas station's drink machines. And I think to myself. I figure there's a few possibilities. One is that if I put in a dollar and hit the "change return," it'll just spit my dollar bill back out. Another is that it'll refuse to give me ANYTHING back unless I buy something. But there's that slim ray of hope...

Things begin to look up when I get up to the vending machine and see that everything costs $1.25. Meaning, at the very least, I can put $2 in, buy SOMETHING, and get three more quarters. With cautious optimism, I slide in my dollar. I hit the change plunger. For a sickeningly long moment, nothing happens.

Then I hear the satisfying chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk of four quarters being dispensed.

I do a little happy dance.

For about the gazillionth (+/- 0.2 gazillion) week in a row, I spent my Saturday morning down in the Optics lab (down in the dark, sunless, cell-phone-reception-less basement of Hayes Hall), trying to come up with SOME experiment I could do to get data for my Optics final project (33% of my final grade in the class) on optical tweezers.

My presentation is a week-and-a-half away, and still, I've got zilch.

I do, however, know how I'm going to introduce the topic.

[Title Slide] "Hi there, everyone. My topic to-day is Optical Tweezing. When I told my mom that I'd been assigned the topic, she thought it was great and that it'd go well with my interest in cosmology. At that point, I needed to stop and explain to her that that's NOT what optical tweezers are, and that, for the last time, cosmology is NOT the same thing as cosmetology."

I swear to God, that's how I'm going to open. I'm in trouble, yeah?

Meh. I've pulled myself through worse. But I digress.

So there my professor (not the same one whose class I'm doing the project for--just the one whose apparatus it is) and I were, down in the lab. We were attempting to build towers out of sub-micron (less than one millionth of a meter) polystyrene spheres. We were doing this because our optical tweezers don't actually tweeze, at least not in the up-down direction. Basically, they're like real tweezers, if the thing you're trying to pick up is slippery--you can chase whatever it is all across the bathroom sink, but until you get it pinned in a corner, you're not gonna be able to grab it. What that means is that we can pin stuff to walls, and we can also pin stuff to stuff that's pinned onto walls (and so on), but if we just want to take a ball from the bottom of our cell and drag it to the middle (which was what I originally wanted to do), no dice.

In order to stick stuff onto other stuff requires that our solution contain ferritin, aka Horse Spleen. Don't ask me why. We're pretty sure it's not just a pH effect, but beyond that... The stuff reeks, but I don't care, since I have little (read: no) sense of smell. So while my professor is gagging, I'm working merrily away. To-day, we (actually, HE, thank God) had a spill of the stuff. None of it got on me (at least, I don't think) or him, but I did the work in cleaning it up, and now I'm wondering if I smell like Horse Spleen. The only person I've asked so far was one of my house mates, who was EXTREMELY unhelpful, claiming she didn't know what Horse Spleen smelled like.

Bah.

Was there a point to this post? No. No, I don't think so.

P.S. Happy Passover!

An allstu recently brought this to my attention:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/01/26/sahib.ca.marijuana.vending.kcal

And, while I'm not necessarily against the idea, it reminded me very much of this:

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e96/Antar05/RefreshingCrack.png

The future is now, my friends. The future is now.

-G

(For a re-cap, click here)


Kenyon is snow-covered right now (and bee-you-tee-fuhl), and it looks like our flying, furry friend has decided to come inside--he parked himself in the Chalmers infocenters (near the printers by Helpline).

No one had the heart to evict him, though, evidently, there are specially-trained "bat removal specialists" in the college hierarchy.

Just finished watching Razor. Pretty damn good, gotta say.

And the second I heard the voice of the Hybrid, I knew I recognized it from somewhere.

Of course, IMDB was no help (the cast listings for Razor has not yet been included), but when the credits rolled, I found that the Hybrid was played by none other than Campbell Lane, whom I know as the voice of the Bentusi from the Homeworld series! That was such a perfect casting decision, it's not even funny.

Rock on, BSG casting director. Rock on.


In other, much sadder news, Jen's visit is over, and I am depressed (quit your barfing).

Dadadadadum, Memories... doodeedoodeeda-- oh. sorry.

In preparation for Hillel's second quiz night, the Quiz Night committee (namely, helenahandbag and me) needed to get some quiz questions. Without enough time to write our own or to order some from Patrick's Press, I was about to email my old Quiz Bowl coach to ask if I he could email me some of the ones I wrote during my four-year tenure on that team when I discovered that I still had, stashed away in the annals of my gmail account, some old transcripts I'd done of actual It's Academic matches that I'd emailed to myself.

I had written to myself, in the body of one of the messages, simply: "God, you must really want to be on TV."

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I have Classical Mechanics for an hour and a half Tues/Thurs morning, and, throughout the semester, I've found myself drifting off in that class.

THIS week, I decided to see if my focus would increase with the use of a caffeinated beverage: it does. Two cups of Lemon Spice Green/Black tea provided by orangetango got me through Tueday, and Adagio Tea's Mandarin Green got me through to-day.

But, both days, I encountered the downside to drinking large quantities of tea at once, and that downside hit me about an hour into class. It doesn't help that the 2nd floor of Hayes hall has no restrooms (one must either go down a floor, up a floor, or sideways into connecting Tomsich).

So, if I don't drink tea, I won't be able to focus in class.

If I do drink tea, about an hour in, I'll need to duck out (humiliatingly) for a few minutes.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

Catch-22.

I woke up this morning with an idea in my head. By the time I'd gotten out of bed, I'd already formulated most of what you see below.

The premise is this: you're a trustee with a kid at Kenyon attempting to "endow" all of Kenyon, but you pay tuition for each property you land on (corresponding to every class your kid takes). Once you get a monopoly, instead of building houses, you endow professorships. So here's what I've got mapped out so far:

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So I'm asking for some feedback--what do we think? Is this a fair representation of Kenyon? Are there buildings that should be repositioned? Omitted? Added? What should go on Park Place?

And here's the bigger question: do we think we can get Hasbro to license this? Couldn't you just the bookstore selling this? I looked into Make Your Own-Opoly (which I actually own, somewhere), but their map is a bit different than the standard Monopoly board.

I. Want. This. To. Come. Into. Existence.

Three pieces relating to Saturday's incident ran in to-day's issue of the Collegian:

http://www.kenyoncollegian.com/news/2007/09/27/News/AntiSemitic.Vandalism.Outrages.Campus-2997493.shtml
http://www.kenyoncollegian.com/news/2007/09/27/Opinion/Is.Tolerance.An.Illusion.On.The.Hill-2997411.shtml
http://www.kenyoncollegian.com/news/2007/09/27/Opinion/Kenyon.Dialogue.On.Hate.Selective-2997410.shtml

Immediately, it seems, an allstu/allemp discussion broke out. I hadn't realized that, until now, the faculty was unaware of the event, and it was heartening to find that the first two responses were from faculty members.

Figuring I'd remained silent long enough, I, myself, joined the discussion this evening with this rather long-winded email:

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More on that event I mentioned as it develops.

Note: lighter tone than previous posts

There was a really awesome thunderstorm to-night, and it was really awesome to watch and listen to... until it hit a tree in the front yard of Hillel. The tree missed the house (Thank Heavens for Small Miracles), but took out our BRAND NEW Sukkah and the power line. So... no power, probably no hot water--AND NO INTERNET (I'm typing this from Gund computer lab, where I'm on duty working for Helpline)! I don't know if I'll be able to survive! Oh yeah, speaking of survival, now there's a live wire SOMEWHERE in our front yard.

Worse yet, it seems that only Hillel lost power--even the newly-reopened gas station next door is good. Now, this is more than just a Misery Loves Company thing--if half the campus lost power, you'd better believe that someone would be by to fix that power line THAT NIGHT, but since it's just Hillel... hopefully it'll just be a day or two and not a few WEEKS.

A few WEEKS? How am I gonna survive a few WEEKS without internet?


[Update: Okay, so I overreacted. Turns out, when there's a live wire involved, they react REAL quick--power's back, though I'm the only one left in the house (my housemates all fled for the night, as it can get really hot in this house without fans going).]

I'm disappointed.


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One of the house managers is drafting an unofficial response to be printed in the Collegian (hopefully). IT will be more vitriolic.