GreenPenInc Central
The Baby's Nursery album has been updated.
Out of a total of 10 pictures, 4 have been added in the past day, and 10 in the past week.
The Slone Power Supply album has been updated.
Out of a total of 12 pictures, 10 have been added in the past day, and 11 in the past week.
The Totally random album has been updated.
Out of a total of 8 pictures, 1 have been added in the past day.
The Christmas 2007 album has been updated.
Out of a total of 1 pictures, 1 have been added in the past day.
ComputersThe long-awaited new laptop has arrived at last!
By 'long-awaited', I'm referring to how long I've wanted a new computer and saved for it. I definitely don't mean how long I've waited, after ordering, for it to ship: it was only a week ago today that I placed the order! Since they say it takes 1-2 weeks just to configure it usually, I'd say that's not bad at all.
Here are some relevant specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 2 MiB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB
2 GiB RAM
120 GB 5400 RPM hard drive
8x DVD burner
nVidia Quadro NVS 140M, 128 MiB VRAM
15.4" WSXGA+ widescreen, 1680x1050 native resolution
3x USB 2.0 (1.1 was incredibly slow with large amounts of data)
IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
Sundry other features (some kind of card reader, keyboard light, wireless internet, etc.)
There are tons of intangibles about this machine that I just love. The craftsmanship is head and shoulders above the competition -- it's a solidly built machine. (After owning a Dell for 3 years, I came to realize that's important to me!) The sound is surprisingly clear for laptop speakers. And it's so incredibly quiet, too! When I turned it on for the first time, I couldn't even tell whether it was on when I closed my eyes. Last night I thought it was getting rather loud; turns out, the noise was from my other laptop several metres away.
Far and away, the biggest downfall of the computer is Windows Vista. The OS is simply not ready for prime time yet. My system is a beast, and once Vista boots up it runs it well, but it seems to take forever to boot up in the first place. I've even had a blue screen of death already! And several of the features just don't work.
The reason I'm keeping it instead of 'downgrading' to XP is to keep an eye to the future. I've no doubt that, in the 3+ years I'm guaranteed to have this laptop, MS will tweak and patch to the point where Vista's a decent OS, like they did with XP. I'd rather just keep slogging away with Vista until they do.
Of course, what will make it bearable will be the 'other' OS on my system -- Gentoo Linux. I can't wait until I get it installed so I can actually start getting stuff done on my computer. I've never dual booted before, but Thinkpads are supposed to be awesome for Linux and I have extensive day-to-day experience with Gentoo.
In the meantime, at least I have the machine in time for the NIST trip in a week, and the MMM conference at the beginning of next month, where I'll be giving a talk!
BaseballIf somebody told me a month ago that I could have:
- My favourite team of all time, the Cleveland Indians, advancing to the ALCS
- The hated Yankees eliminated from the postseason in the first round, once again
- A bonus paycheque of $147.35 because of it
I would have flipped out. Last night, though, that's exactly what happened!
Well.. almost. Technically the cash is just a refund, because that's how much I paid for four tickets to game 5. With the Tribe taking the series in 4 games, that game will no longer be played, so I should be getting my money back pretty soon. Of course, the downside is that I miss seeing probable Cy Young winner C.C. Sabathia in a playoff game at the Jake, but I'm glad because this lines up the Tribe's pair of aces for the ALCS against the BoSox. (Not to mention, having just ordered a new Thinkpad, I could frankly use the cash at the moment!)
Here's to the 2007 Indians -- the best Tribe team I've ever seen, who have a great shot at taking the World Series!
PersonalOf all the things I've ever done, few are as silly as setting the world record for the memorization of e.
In January of this year, the discovery of the Pi World Ranking List rekindled an old hobby of mine from the beginning of highschool -- the memorization of the decimal places of pi. I soon found that there was also an e world ranking list, and that the record was much more accessible! (777 places is a lot easier than 100,000.)
I soon started working on both pi and e. I never got as far with pi as I had in highschool (fell a few hundred short), but once I started focusing exclusively on e, progress was swift. I was memorizing as many as nearly three hundred digits per day at my peak, with a clear goal of 2718 places ("e" thousand) on 2/7 ("e" day).
Then, the real world intervened.
I quickly found that, perhaps unsurprisingly, my mental energy was being sapped by this worthless endeavour. I couldn't concentrate on my research enough to get anywhere. So, I forgot my goal, got a few friends from church together, and just recited what I had so I could make the list. I ended up reciting 1590 of them, and it was good enough for the record!
Of course, I knew it wouldn't last more than a few months. Sure enough, I just got an email from the keeper of the List, letting me know that my record had been broken. The new record is currently 1810 digits, and when it gets broken it won't be by me. It is enough for me that I was the best that anyone had ever been at something very silly, even if only for a short while.
That said, I am a sucker for Pi day, and I crammed as many digits as I could in the 40 minutes prior to the recitation contest. I ended up being able to recall 1000 even, which gives me one more dubious distinction -- I'm officially the first member of the 1000/1000 club, having officially recited 1000+ digits of both pi and e.
While it was a fun challenge, I can't help but long for a more useful hobby. To that end, I've finally started pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming competent with electronics. Right now I'm doing basic circuit theory, but eventually I want to become an expert in both semiconductor devices and wireless communication. At least then I'll have something to show for my time!
The Photos album has been updated.
Out of a total of 1 pictures, 1 have been added in the past day.
SchoolThis past Monday was the culmination of three weeks' worth of frenzied studying, learning everything I could about gravitational waves. Rather a tall order, since I never took a course in general relativity to begin with, but I digress. Once I'd given my 20-minute, no-notes talk, and braved the following 60-plus minute question period, all that was left was to wait.
Yesterday the faculty met to decide everyone's fate, and shortly thereafter came the news -- I passed my special oral qualifying exam! It was a real relief, since I didn't know whether I'd passed (I didn't ace it the same way I aced the written quals). Thus, all the hurdles are behind me, and nothing stands between me and doing my thesis research. The pizza and beer were well-earned!
It's exciting that things are basically in my own hands from here on out. I have the opportunity to really take charge, stay focused, and get my research done and thesis written in as few years as possible. I hope I can prove up to the challenge!
The Wedding Pictures album has been updated.
Out of a total of 194 pictures, 67 have been added in the past day.
HumourWhile reading a story (on cnn.com) about the deplorable theft of an icon from a Greek monastery, I couldn't help but notice the unintentionally hilarious final sentence.
The stolen artwork was one of several famous religious icons in Greece, where offerings or votive gifts are left by worshippers who pray for recovery from illness or successful conception, or make other prayers.
(Emphasis added.)
I'll leave you, dear reader, to ponder the multiple meanings of that sentence.
ScienceI found a really promising book on Amazon the other day. It looks very relevant to my research, reasonably priced -- a perfect addition to my wish list, given the current status of our family budget!
On adding it to the wish list, I was greeted with a rather bewildering sight...
I suppose nanomaterials research, being a more advanced subject, tends to attract researchers from a more advanced stage in life. It's not inconceivable that some of them might have kids, for whom they also shop at Amazon. Or maybe they just really like animated films.
Either way, it's a pretty funny connection.
The Oddities album has been updated.
Out of a total of 2 pictures, 2 have been added in the past day.
The TEM images album has been updated.
Out of a total of 11 pictures, 1 have been added in the past day, and 5 in the past week.
After weeks of continuous and unvarying disappointment in the results of my samples, I got a very pleasant surprise. The TEM came back from a recent batch, and the results are stunning. A beautifully monodisperse monolayer of particles, with long range ordering. It's the kind of monolayer picture I could present at a conference. And most surprising of all, I didn't even use the Langmuir trough! Nope -- it's just a single drop applied by pipet to a TEM grid.
All my best TEM pics are available in the TEM album. Unfortunately I never wrote the code to link directly to an individual image, so you'll have to hunt around. Should be pretty obvious which one it is, though, and the rest of the pictures are pretty too. Note the scale bar in the bottom left, which tells you about the size!
On June 17 of this year, Amy and I got married. No more Amy Lambert -- she's now Mrs. Hogg! The wedding was wonderful, as was the honeymoon; pictures to follow from each. Between work, studying for quals, and particularly my new family, that explains why blog posts will probably continue to be few and far between for the foreseeable future.
Every day, on my way from school but never to, I pass a sign with a sticker on it. The sticker says, "I'm pro-choice and I pray".
Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is not to explore the complex interplay between the abortion issue and people's personal religious beliefs. I just find it ironic that a One Way sign would be "pro choice".
I have two microwaves.
One is a newish Panasonic, which acts like it works great but in actuality doesn't heat things. It used to heat things, so I'm sure it requires only the most minor of repairs.
The other is an older model, with an analog dial instead of push buttons, and no rotating plate. However, I can personally vouch for the fact that it works great, since I've been using it for months on end now.
This weekend, Amy is moving her belongings into the apartment, one of which is a microwave nicer than either of these. So to make a long story short, I need to get rid of two microwaves as soon as possible, preferrably before June 17th.
Now, it would be a (relatively) simple matter to cart them down to the dumpster and toss them. But our society frankly wastes too much as it is, and doing that would make me sick. I mean, the one is perfectly functional, and the other could be made so with a small effort from somebody who knows what they're doing!
So I beg you: If you or anyone you know could use a microwave, please let me know. I'm in Pittsburgh now, but I can probably send them back to Grand Rapids with Amy, and from there I might even be able to arrange transportation to St. Catharines with people coming back from my wedding!
I just don't want perfectly good microwaves to go to waste.
I just got the email from Prof. Majetich. Turns out there is room for me in the nanoparticles group! It's a real change in direction for me, but I can't help but be utterly fascinated by the things. I'm going to be working on the Spin-NIRT data storage project. I get to figure out how to get nanoparticle monolayers to write to media, which apparently is quite hard. And in the process I will understand electricity and magnetism -- understand them, you see -- down to the very core of my being.
What follows is the text of a spam email which evaded the Carnegie Mellon spam filter. Notice how it scrupulously avoids any spam-like phrases. So, where's the message? In a black-and-white image file containing the text. Pretty clever. Enjoy!
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Creation and Evolution
I've been thinking again about the Creation/Evolution debate lately, and I think I've distilled it into one main question in my mind, one to which I've never heard a satisfactory answer (at least, from a Creationist). One can argue back and forth all day about this or that piece of evidence, and which side it "really" supports, but let's cut to the heart of the matter.
[i]Why does the Earth look old?[/i]
In other words, why is it that the sum total of mankind's knowledge on this subject paints a coherent picture of an ancient Earth? It would be bad enough if the preponderance of evidence merely seemed to rule out a 10,000-year-old planet, without being more specific than that. But we actually have strong convergence on a very specific age: 4.55 billion years. God, being omniscient, must have known that things would appear thus. So why would He give us one message with His Word, and another, contradictory one with His works?
Obviously, I've heard the question asked before, and answers have been given. One of the most popular ones is "apparent age": just as God created Adam as a mature adult, He created the Earth in a mature state. This is completely unsatisfactory. God created Adam as an adult so that he could function as one. However, differing levels of radioactive elements make no practical difference for the functioning of practically anything on the planet. Even if they did, it's hard to imagine a reason for them to be set in a coherent manner within an individual sample to converge on a specific age.
Probably the most common answer is, "it doesn't". Anyone making this argument is almost certainly under-informed, and in any case they're wrong. Unless they have access to significant amounts of data which the scientific community does not -- which is unlikely -- they simply haven't examined the situation in detail and thus cannot be expected to give a meaningful answer to the question. (I say "almost" certainly because of the existence of the Creationist leadership, who have no excuse for being unaware of the evidence. Many of their opponents simply say that they are lying, but I prefer to believe the best, so frankly I don't know quite what to make of them.)
I suppose another answer to the question would be that the ways of God are mysterious, and we cannot know why He did things this way. I agree, but look at where that leaves us. We have a consistent and coherent picture painted of the history of this planet, which seems to be the only one that stands up to rigorous examination. This cannot be an accident: either it is a true account of the way things actually happened, or it is an illusion that was intentionally created by God for purposes unknown, or both. What could He be trying to tell us? Is it a test, to see whether we cling to His Word in the face of strong evidence to the contrary?
Going along with this, is it conceivable that the consistency of the evidence might serve as a sign, from God, that we have to change our interpretation of the Bible? If not, that raises the interesting question: just what form could such a sign possibly take, if not this?
Clearly, the same sort of question applies to evolution and people's objections to it. However, I chose to frame it in terms of the age of the Earth for two main reasons. First, given what we know about evolution and how it proceeds, the Earth's antiquity is a logical prerequisite for evolution to be true. And second, I'm revealing my physics-centric bias once again. :)
I am genuinely curious to hear other answers to the question, or even to hear why the answers I listed were dismissed unfairly if you feel that they were.
