I Am A Scientist

Pushing Tin

2009-10-14T15:03:00.001-05:00

Bottom Comment

2009-10-11T02:20:00.001-05:00

I'm Guaranteed to Run Through and Prove the Game

2009-10-10T20:39:00.007-05:00

Ain't bigger than the pieces in it.

Here are some pictures:

Thoughtful.

Mr. Byrnes

A bad picture of good people.

The Long and Unwinding Road.

Please stop telling me that the word 'progress' is an abstraction.

Beep bloop.

Some tools are bigger than others.

Lake Whitney

2009-10-08T00:03:00.002-05:00

Man I miss this place.

Business Casual

2009-10-04T11:41:00.002-05:00

This is how I maintain a professional relationship with customers I am assigned to work with:

(9:38:52 AM) oklahomabythesea: LETS GET READY
(9:39:05 AM) Neoesion: OH YEAH!
(9:39:24 AM) Neoesion: want to do a goto?
(9:39:26 AM) oklahomabythesea: 1 lethal dose of microcode
(9:39:31 AM) oklahomabythesea: there is neoesion to worry
(9:39:36 AM) Neoesion: lol

A New Kind of Hobby

2009-10-01T16:57:00.009-05:00

Having been out of mainstream physics for a [surprisingly] significant amount of time now, it has been a while since lofty ideas about the inflation of space-time and the unification of quantum field theory (QFT) and gravitation (in the form of general relativity, GR) have been anywhere near the front of my mind. So, while my friend Paul came into town to visit I felt like it was sort of a crash course in remembering and catching up on the current state of affairs.

While it still makes me feel weird to imagine abstract but almost inescapable conclusions about the fate of the universe, I realize that being outside the field may have rejuvenated or given me new perspective on topics that were very important to me once. One of the properties of physics or any of the hard sciences that I have always appreciated is the required practice of always questioning long lines of traditional results. In science we never attempt to prove anything, we only seek to disprove hypotheses. When one of those hypotheses stands the test of time, we begrudgingly call it a theory. It is safe to say that nearly all scientists' lines of work have them engaged in trying to tear down the theories that came before them or even the ones that they created themselves.

One startling issue with QFT and GR is that they are masters of their domains, the microscopic scale and the cosmic scale respectively. Both theories have been independently verified in thousands of tens of thousands of ways. Assumptions that both of these theories rely on or extend have also been tested, the very existence of operating particle accelerators tests every day (sometimes 24 hours a day) the workability of special relativity. But not a single test has conclusively invalidated any crucial component of either theory, which for a scientist is the worst possible scenario because we still have two independent theories that seem to be mathematically incompatible at least to our current set of tools.

Much of physics these past two decades centered around this problem, and a lot of great and new discoveries have come from studying it, but each discovery is still compatible. If both theories are the large-scale and small-scale approximations of some greater theory, then we should expect that failures would happen at the boundaries of those two pictures. The problem again here is that the mathematics used in phrasing these problems results in quickly intractable problems, mind not the additional complications of obtaining data relevant to these regions. That leads me to wonder about the strategies people are taking right now, essentially relying on the same methods we have used to create these recent discoveries in our attempts reconcile their differences. The well-known methods of guessing/deducing partial differential equations or exploiting the presence or lack of some symmetry in natural phenomena have brought us great success, but as many people have postulated these same methods will most likely not work because every well-trained physicist knows them, and the cross-section of IQ and dedication in that field is quite large. I think if those methods were going to work they would have worked by now.

I am definitely not the only one who has thought this way, and there is definitely a small, noisy, and generally safely ignored section of people thinking along the same lines that if we are to move forward we need to attempt to break the most cherished and rock-solid assumptions that our theories take on in order to find new physics. For me, the best way to figure out how something works is to see it when it's completely inoperable. I live for the boundary cases (weak pun). One especially cherished quality that is interesting to examine is the continuity of space-time, which is the mathematical basis for all of our more advanced mathematics we use to tackle physical problems. Human perspective on the world, centered around eyesight, tends to cause us to imagine space as a continuous span of points or locations, separated by spatial distance and volume which acts the background for matter to exist. All of our higher dimensional playthings have generally that same structure.

Mathematicians have always been interested in reducing such ideas to their barest elements, and any senior mathematics undergraduate student can explain to you the structure of the real numbers using Dedekind cuts and the difference between countable and uncountable cardinality. I do not find it startling at all that Cantor, who is responsible for much of our understanding of cardinality in infinite sets (the difference between continuum and discrete models) was driven insane by his study. There are many mind boggling concepts surrounding uncountable sets, and while that alone is not startling -- we have supposedly finite minds after all -- there is legitimate mathematical concern about the structure of such sets. They can be defined self referentially, but there is no axiomatic system which can uniquely specify such a set without specifying another set of unequal cardinality. That is, the very proposition of attempting to produce a set of axioms intended to pick out a certain infinite set will have multiple interpretations as to its cardinality. The properties of real numbers can be equivalently constructed using a set of lower cardinality. Couple this with problems surrounding the axiom of choice and the notion of incompleteness and I think we have some strong suggestions that such structures may be overly complicated for use in physics. This is not physical reasoning, but more an eliciting of a path which has not been investigated much. The road less traveled by and all that. If we can recover empirical validity without using these assumptions then there was never a need for them in the first place, and I have hope that would lead to a contradiction with either accepted theory at some point. That is a boundary, and that is fun!

That leads me to my decision to join others in this hobby of "investigating" in a broad sense alternatives to our typical view of space-time, and I think there is no better time to do it really. Computing power is incredible now, and the intersection of computational models such as cellular automata and causal networks with physical ideas has been introduced by the aforementioned small group. This makes for a relatively accessible line of research while I am outside the ivory tower, and combines with my interest in using machines for fundamental research.

So, I hope to now use this space as a collection of investigations I have done on my own along with my methodology and questions and overviews of other results too, both for my own reference and others if I make anything worthwhile.

My first contribution is an article that is about two years old now written by Stephen Wolfram, the author of a "A New Kind of Science" and one of the pioneers in this new little niche. He spells out simply what the mission is and some good explanations of potential snags when you try to think in the mold of older results.:

My Hobby: Hunting for Our Universe by Stephen Wolfram

My Friend

2009-09-21T23:43:00.001-05:00

My friend Steve came over today and told me that he had been "jumping the fuck out of some rope."

A necklace of 50 eyes

2009-09-21T09:47:00.001-05:00

is yours to keep.

Desk...

2009-09-06T16:29:00.002-05:00

I've had a desk idea that has been in the "building stages" for quite some time now. The engineer in me thinks it is high time I recognize that the project is a bit out of my reach right now in terms of tools, time, and carpentry experience. Realizing that I am now focusing on the deliverable, i.e. the desk and I aim to have a solid one by Monday evening.

Letter from Grandma

2009-09-06T10:13:00.004-05:00

"Dear Trent,

Bet you are surprise [sic] to get this letter.

I know you and Laura enjoyed Bailey's visit as much as she.

I was sitting here watching a program that showed Babies being left in cars in summer and dying. So, I came up with an alarm that would warn people about kids in cars, but I don't know how to get it started. So, maybe you can help. I would like for it to be sensor activated or voice activated saying "baby on board".

No batteries, because they would forget to change them. If sensors it could be by the door on the driver's side, so when they opened the door to get out it would go off. I don't know how to do either one. So if you could help I would owe you big time.

Don't know if we are having a family reunion in Sept. or not, but will let you know.

Love you so much.

Poppy will be working from Nov. to Oct. 3 to 4 times a week until Christmas.

Call if you can help or give me some suggestions on the idea.

Love you,

Nana"

Weather Update

2009-04-08T21:16:00.003-05:00

Winter is always a weird season for me. The daily shrinking amount of sunlight to be had always brings about a similar reaction inside me where I express less and less about what I am thinking. I no longer find this as bad as I used to, just a different mode.

I've been working on a lot of side projects lately, most of which I will end up finishing soon. I hope to document those here and on a more organized site I will make for that purpose. It's exciting to finish these projects up because they represent some solid results of an ongoing project I have been trying to implement in my life, that is really take advantage of the time I have and the skills and actually make something. Contrast that to my usual habit of learning about something on the side but never producing any definite output. It just requires a smarter approach.

Thing I want to do in the upcoming months:

Retake my GRE so it is up to date. Take the Math GRE subject test.
Keep developing applications that solve problems interesting to me but help others too. Attend the Google I/O conference.
Begin contributing regularly to an open source project!
Build more skate-able stuff and keep skating a lot.
Enjoy my time out of school.

Anyhow, living in LA is still a blast. I no longer have a car but that's actually pretty cool too, I ride my bike a lot.

Keep your eyes on http://www.j-o-h-n-s-o-n.com for the latest in Wilde fashion.

A Pretty Good Night in Echo Park

2008-10-07T21:31:00.002-05:00

1.) Leave work early because I can.

2.) Drive around Hollywood to run errands. Passport photos/Send brother birthday skateboard. Check.

2.) Get home, skate down to Sunset and skate around for a while.

3.) Find one of those banned bacon-wrapped hot dog dealers (score!). Buy a beer and rejoice.

4.) Get ready for work travel tomorrow, side project time. Good night.

Speakin' of the G's I be holdin', picture me rollin'

I Am A Programming Nerd

2008-10-05T23:08:00.003-05:00

Pascal's Triangle parity only random colored.

Theory of Computation: The Halting Problem

2008-08-21T14:31:00.011-05:00

Certain things cannot be known about any algorithm or effective procedure. For example, let's say we wrote an algorithm together.

First we give that algorithm some input, maybe a finite number of integers:

x1, x2, x3, ..., xn

Now our algorithm is going to do something with these integers in a finite number of steps and give us a result. Maybe it will sort them by largest to smallest and print them out in that order: the key here is that the algorithm does things with the inputs in a specified order and with specified instructions on how to handle certain instructions. For example the algorithm probably needs to compare two integers and see which one of them is larger, that is evaluate the expression:

a > b

and then do something with it. A common notation for that is:

if ( a > b )

{

do stuff;

...

}

where "do stuff" stands for a set of instructions. The algorithm is also allowed to do things on a repetitive basis using logic such as

while ( a > b )

{

do stuff;

...

}

So we have conditional branches (if statements) and conditional loops (while statements). There are a few more possibilities but at this point we have enough expressiveness in our language to warrant the following conjecture:

Given any algorithm A(x1, x2, x3, ..., xn) with finitely many finite inputs there is no generic algorithm that can be written to determine whether or not A will ever halt.

That is we can never determine if our algorithm will finish the job we gave it, and so we call such a problem undecidable. It turns out that a lot of interesting problems are provably undecidable, which has stunned computer scientists and mathematicians for almost a century now. There was a time when mathematicians -- first and foremost among them David Hilbert -- thought that the idea of an undecidable problem was fictitious. Gödel then proved that any computational language that can do simple arithmetic (i.e. add and multiply natural numbers) has undecidable propositions, so while they may have a definite value there is absolutely no way to show it in a finite number of steps. That result is now called Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and it has forever changed human ideas in mathematics. A more specific version of his theorem goes like this (from Wikipedia):

Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both *consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.

*Consistency means that no statement in the language can be both true and not true.

While Gödel's incompleteness theorem sounds scary, it is by no means the end of computability theory. In fact it was only the start; the techniques and ideas invented to prove the incompleteness theorem led to a cascade of ideas that is now modern computability theory. The Church-Turing thesis and the lambda calculus are a good next stop.

Beer is Nighttime Water

2008-08-21T11:53:00.001-05:00

Am I right?

Baby's First Earthquake

2008-07-29T18:32:00.004-05:00

I didn't have to wait long for an earthquake, just three months. It was actually pretty cool. They originally said it was a 5.8 but now it seems the average is a 5.4. I'm near the top floor of my building so there was quite a bit of swaying and my desk chair rolled me around a bit. I have to admit that in the first few seconds I was a little frightened that it was just the beginning of a more massive quake, but no one else seemed too afraid so I just enjoyed it. A nice beginner earthquake.

If you don't got the data that chatta don't matta: Earthquake Data

Obscurity is the best camouflage, nuclear power has had its hour.

2008-07-14T17:23:00.006-05:00

I get a lot of spam. I'm sure you do too.

Every once in a while I wonder where all that text at the bottom of spam mails is found. It seems obvious that it is pulled across the internet from random places or from phrase files stored on the spammer's machine. I was surprised when I ran a search and found that someone's semantics and language study website is actually being raped in the name of bypassing spam filters with valid phrases. The website I found is simply a long list of various neologisms delimited with '/' characters. I assume the neologisms were generated with some algorithm which searches a dictionary for nouns and verbs fitting some clever semantic rules. It's funny to see that the automated generation of meaningful phrases has been in turn used to trick a filter designed to exclude non-meaning, and this has probably been the most major use of that project to date.

Here are those neologisms.

P.S. Never kiss a gift whore in the mouth.

Ballin' Outta Control

2008-07-03T17:58:00.008-05:00

So, I play this text game online sometimes. The game is fun, I've played it for a long time and I still enjoy it here and there, but every once in a while I'm reminded that it takes a special sort of person to devote their life to building a text based RPG for a small niche community. The creator of the game -- his in-game name is 'Vryce' -- keeps a journal which is accessible only from inside the game. I sometimes log in just to read the journal and I realized that there are probably very few people on the game who know about the feature and even less who use it, so the thoughts of this man's life struggle to build a text game "that will hold your attention FOR ALL TIME, forever, until you die" would go largely unheard unless someone tried to bring them into the light. I just want someone to see the gems I've seen:

-- April 2nd ----------------------------------------------------------

And now for something different! I have many perspectives of my own life,
just as you have for your life.

Here is one perspective of me and Medievia V.

For years and years I have been digging, digging and digging my way
through a mountain of code, ideas, and possibilities that would become
Medievia V, my life's work, my grand dream, your favorite games next
version.

Grand Theft Auto IV comes out this month. They will list hundreds of
developers, many dozens of coders, all working 3-4 years to make a game
that if done well will hold your attention for 30 hours. Those 30 hours
will cost each of you 60 bucks, 2 bucks per hour for 30 hours, an
experience created by hundreds of developers that took them nearly 4
years.

We mostly just get me for the big changes, and then some truly awesome
players who become coder gods and help with the other stuff, as well as

help me figure out my own bugs which is just as important, but mostly it
is me.

We need to make a game that will hold your attention FOR ALL TIME,
forever, until you die, and I have to code most of it myself.

With Grand Theft Auto players expect to play 30 hours before getting
bored, here players expect to play 30 hours EVERY WEEK and not have to pay
ANYTHING.

DIG MAN DIG! I know it can be done, oddly enough there has never been a
question in my mind about this.

Jump back a decade, I was just done digging through the 'Making Medievia
IV mountain', a whole other mountain of the past and then spent a few
years tweaking it, we got to 700 online most nights, over doubling our
goal. I never stopped digging.

The mountain has changed around me and I kept digging. Medievia IV opened
in 1996. I started working on this version around the year 2000 after
already running and developing Medievia for 9 years.

Then after 911 I quit my 'real' job where I was senior VP and making
$165,000 a year to work on my little hobby that paid me $48,000 a year
when players donate enough.

I started digging faster.

I am a simple person and do not hold great value in money making anyone
happy. I do not run Medievia to make money, but money is now a big factor.

DIG DIG DIG

My health sucked, kidney stones, many a year, operations, pain, DIG MIKE
DIG, DIG dig dig.

Soleil [his wife] gets pregnant. Talk about a distraction and a family thing that can suck up time! I can only say this because I know how strong she is about it, we lose that one early with a normal kind of early miscarriage.

DIG NOW MAN DIG NOW!
DIG DIG DIG!
DIG NOW WHILE THE DIGGING IS GOOD!

Soleil gets pregnant. We have a baby boy Ben. Soleil will tell you that
nothing is more important to me than family and I could not wait to have a
baby with her. I do not mean to say I do not want more kids at all, just
that I knew that now...

Now I am digging only when I have time.

I am watching him every day as we really cannot afford anything else. I
find coding anything very deep much harder as my every thought is on the
family and will the boy choke-drown-or die in the very next moment.
Parents know what I am talking about for that first year with an infant.

The boy gets older, Medievia hardly changes for a year...

DIG MAN DIG AT NIGHT! Sleep is over-rated anyway. I sleep less and less.
My health takes a turn and it seems I am always sick. That was years ago
now. I learned that over-all it is best to get more sleep, like 5-7 hours
a night, and never less, and easier to just not sleep one day a week and
make up time that way. It seems healthier then sometimes just doing 3-5
hours of sleep.

DIG DIG! My eldest son turns 16 and now my daughter is 12 and starting to
grow boobs and want boyfriends. Father time keeps marching and as a parent
I have no control over it.

DIG DIG, everything will some how work out and everyone will grow up
happy.

They say no one worries more or works harder than a male between the ages
of 40-45, everyone needs your money and time and you start worrying about
your own future and retirement that is now just 30 years away. Everyone
needs you and no one does anything for you, you can depend on almost no
one except your spouse, you must become the selfless sacrificer. They say the
years for a male between 40-45 are hard.

They are right. It seems my shoulders could never be strong or wide enough
for everyone that depends on me.

DIG DIG DIG

Money dries up after World of Warcraft comes out.

Players compare Medievia to a game that took over 400 developers over 4
years to create, test, and bring to market. They do this because the game
is pretty good as it is so simple and easy to learn, yet somehow gives you
a solid 1-6 months of fun before you finally get bored with it. Any ape
could play this game and be competitive. It is one of the first games like
this to even shoot for more than 30 hours of fun [Uhhh, Everquest, Ultima Online anyone?] , they charge a monthly subscription if you wish to play.

DIG MAN DIG!

More kidney stones, more than ever, often one on each side, and now I get
a stone in my salivary gland, more operations, more pain, yet during this
time as I DIG AND DIG I figure out some coding AI stuff that would make
Peter Molyneux the gaming code guru piss himself. You have not seen much
of this yet in the game btw, it is coming soon. Well now the whole
MEDIEVIA V PLAN has to change!

!^^!!&!$!!**&%^$!!!!^%^$!!!!!!!!!!!! DAMN THE WORLD!!!! Do I have time
to change the plan? Does my family? Can I afford it?

In some ways I become a madman and as that dude from Mythbusters says, 'I
reject your reality and substitute my own'. I cannot ignore what these new
AI and data concepts could mean for this version.

AGAIN, and again I change the plan. Over the next few months the plan
changes drastically and becomes something truly huge and new. No other
game will give players this kind of open sand box of a fantasy world to
play in with their friends.

DIG DIG

I amuse myself by thinking, to the creators of WoW your gameworld is a 3-4
year slash and burn procedure, to take as much of your money as they can
and leave you with memories, and a desire to reinvest all over again with
a sequel that will come and surely be less fun and less magical of an
experience.

DIG DIG, ignore money, ignore WoW, ignore reality, every lesson learned in
my Fortune for small business magazine talks about early risk and a damn
the world mentality of the little guy with big new unique plans.

The plan grows. In the year 2007 it grew a lot as I coded some amazing new
path finding stuff that I surely should share with the world when I get
time, then some new AI concepts that meant almost anything was possible.

DIG DIG

Everytime I recoded this stuf it got faster and took less memory. I am
beginning to think the game can become anything I want, so now the
question is, what is the best game ever made, what would it do if you damn
near ignored CPU needs and memory requirements?

DIG DIG

The plan TAKES OFF. I am no longer so much worried about CPU and memory,
these new concepts are amazingly frugal and tight and tested and stress
tested over and over, they need almost no CPU, no memory, and can load and
save very fast.

How can Medievia V be more like being in a living breathing world, as if
you jumped into your favorite fantasy novel?

DIG DIG

I will have many mobs that develop personal relationships with every
player: workers, dragons, and pets. The workers will run everything, from
small clan businesses to becoming king of a kingdom.

DIG DIG

Players will DEFINE the world geographically with moving towns, abodes,
businesses, islands, and the such. There will be big wars and grand
adventures that will make killing Zekzakmek a boring old thing we did just
to pass the time. The new kingdoms will make the old kingdoms look like
pong compared to Halo.

DIG DIG DIG
DIG DIG DIG

The game will become a real world, the first of its kind that is so like a
living breathing SciFiFantasty book that it makes headlines. The Medievia
V gameworld will hold grand adventures and keep players attentions forever
as they explore the deep features on land and ocean.

DIG DIG DIG
DIG DIG DIG
DIG DIG DIG

What Medievia V can be is now WAY BEYOND anything I ever dreamed before.

Now I just need to go back redo it all for this new plan with the new AI,
scrap the new AI event module that I coded 3 times aleady with 3 different
plans, the new AI plan is so cool it does not even need an event module! I
needed to re-code all existing mobfactions and AI finite state machines,
redesign the AI goal module. DIG MAN DIG!!!!

DIG DIG DIG, Eagles lose again. Philadelphia has now gone 25 years without
a championship, AND YET, I DIG and DIG and ignore reality, Eagles will win
next year, yes I am a big sports fan. You want reality TV? That sucks,
sports is real, check it out.

DIG DIG DIG

My youngest is now 4, my oldest boy is 18 and going to college next year,
my daughter will soon be 15. Family takes a lot of time and I am
determined to be the best dad I can be, Medievia TO BE DAMNED.

Damned it has been as Medievia V is still not ready.

DIG AT NIGHT has been the plan.

For the last year and a half I have woken up around 5pm when my wife comes
home, worked until 6:30-7pm, spent a few hours with family, then worked
and or coded new stuff until 10-11am. I tried to get 6-7 hours sleep a
night, any less and my coding and concepts suffered. I take 1-2 days off
sleeping every week, and try to work that in with doctor appointments
which always have to happen when the damn sun is up. These days Soleil
needs me to watch the boy as she is now always on business trips as she
gets training and trains others, etc. I cannot complain, she makes more
money than I do now.

DIG DIG DIG! There is no going back, no changing the plan again. I said
that 3 months ago in a previous journal.

There is just ONE more thing I am not positive how to implement, which has
to do with the economy and new tradegoods created by the 13 clan
businesses.

The rest is ready to come on board. The DIGGING is nearly over.

DIG DIG

Everything will change for you in the game, every feature in some way will
be affected by what is about to happen. That may sound scary but I am here
to promise you and to assure you that most people will absolutely love
most of the changes coming, except for one thing.

One thing everyone will complain about.

The economy.

I am sorry but I must say, HOLD YOUR BREATH, the only thing I predict is
pure economical madness.

The new ship trading and new wagon trading mixed with the clan businesses
alone will change everything we thought we knew about Medievia gold.

DIG MIKE DIG, figure it out! There must be a way!

Weeks have passed. I have not figured it out.

DIG DIG! I finish some more modules.

DIG DIG

Fayla comes back and saves the day for class changes! (mage warrior cleric
thief) This was a project I did not have time to code and the last coder
quit when it was 1/2 done. It is one of the biggest things I ever had
another coder attempt and it did not work well so... CHEEEEEEER! I allow
the gods to totally redo classes just once a version so it is a big deal!
They plan and work on 46 changes to classes, Fayla is amazing and really
pumps my spirits up. These class changes that comes with many eq changes
are now in final testing BTW.

DIG DIG

I suffer a chronic torn rotator cuff. I goes days without any real sleep,
in terrible pain, get massively long needles and stuff, go to physical
therapy, man nothing takes me off my strange coding night time schedule
like doctor appointments do. They slow everything down. I slowly get
better....

DIG MAN DIG! More modules are made ready.

Do I allow the tradegoods created by clan businesses to be sold into the
regular system at trade posts or do I say that they are 'bulk' goods and
can only be bought and sold at docks, for ship trading. Of course I have
damn near refused to take this easy way out, but it is complicated!

Right now the 'capital' when you trade goods via wagon is very low, what
you spend for the stuff is low and would have to go way up. Right now the
trading equation is mostly all about how much that post has and how far
you had to go, that 'how far you had to go' becomes almost meaningless now
as you may have got it right next door. Tricky stuff. The current trading
equation will have to be scrapped. The few lines of code that control so
much of our economy will have to be scrapped.

Days pass, DIG DIG, finish all kinds of modules, dig dig.

!!!!PRESENT TIME!!!!

DIG DIG and I swear this morning I felt like I was at the end. I was
removing that last big boulder, and then the next and I will be THROUGH to
the other side of this mountain that has been before me for 8 some years.

I had to stop and write this journal as I know it has been a long time.

This morning came and I gave up. I decide I will simply try the hard way
and allow the economy to get blown apart as we try to figure out what is
best. That was the break thru, me giving up on knowing for sure how it
will work out and just doing it.

We will try to have ship trading and wagon trading and clan businesses all
work off the same tradegoods, to be damned with how hard that will be to
figure out economically speaking.

That was the last boulder and I am through. The future economy will just
have to suffer as we figure it out 'on the fly' and after the features
have been implemented, as best we can.

Now everything comes to a crossroads.

The plan is here and done and simply needs to be implemented.

My family needs me more than ever.

Medievia needs me more than ever.

This is the story of my life right now and the story of your favorite
game.

I hope to code and dig all day, dig all night, and dig all morning and go
to bed 10am tomorrow, back to my normal schedule for a while. This journal
took an hour to write, though I did do a few more emails, is it a waste of
time? I do not know, like Soleil says, if it gets one person to donate it
is probably worth it. I suppose she is right in that I must let people
know what is going on.

I really do plan on doing a journal almost every day when the new features
bring daily changes and I can simply and briefly talk about the changes of
the day. Until then and until I finish these last few worker AI modules
there will be no more journals,

JUST DIGGING

Rompiendo la Monotonía del Tiempo

2008-07-02T01:14:00.007-05:00

You'll be a magnet for love.

Grey Matters

2008-06-26T16:55:00.002-05:00

Ars Technica posted a response to the article I linked yesterday, it's a detailed response outlining the same points I brought up. Definitely a good response. Go Internet, everything is so democratic and cool.

In personal news: I got paid. Skrillabot charged.

I Don't Know If He's Autistic...

2008-06-25T18:45:00.006-05:00

or he's just an asshole, but this guy Theo Moon in the IT department has the worst social skills I have ever seen. When he came over to my office to set up my fancy-ass phone the other day he maybe said three grunted words while reaching over me to plug stuff in. When I said "Thanks" in the most polite tone I could manage, he walked way without even looking back.

I would take it personally but when he brought another fellow in the office a hard drive today they asked the simple question "Oh, is this mine?" to which he replied "It's a hard drive." as he walked away.

P.S. He wears 'Morpheus' glasses that just rest on the bridge of his nose and has a dirty (as in doesn't wash) blonde pony tail.

Data Mining FTW

2008-06-25T11:51:00.003-05:00

Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson is a pretty smart guy -- this article is pretty inspiring and nicely stated.

While I don't feel that model-based analysis is completely outdated, I do agree that having mind-bogglingly huge amounts of data available allows for statistical techniques to be used to give awesome and predictive results. The comment about the status of physics as a 'discipline starved of data' carries some truth, but it applies more to the string-theory family of models whose hypotheses reside at the Planck scale. There is plenty of space for models testable by current accelerators or those coming in the next few decades and hopefully they will receive more interest as comments like these demonstrate the public's view of current physical research. A really interesting development is the combination of statistical analysis and models as a unified tool rather than competing ideas.

In all though, the mathematical treatment of data is bread and butter now; it is the quickest way to draw (frighteningly) accurate conclusions about groups of people and all sorts of objects and can be used in so many different fields, not just large-scale systems like finance and sociological trends. Any businessperson so inclined could gather data and generate reports about his own business and market and reduce both his need for personnel and overall risk. Correlation isn't causation, but in many practical matters it serves just as well.

Nuclear Power

2008-06-19T10:05:00.002-05:00

The prospect of someone willing to build nuclear power plants again makes me almost willing to eschew all other points of discussion.

Not Guilty

2008-06-14T01:02:00.002-05:00

Today was the last day of my first week at work. Today is also Friday the 13th and also the anniversary of Michael Jackson being acquitted on all counts back in 2005. I also found out today that I live in the neighborhood where Thriller was filmed, of course it's hard to tell which area since everything is sort of gentrified now. Work is pretty A-OK, everyone is really nice and it seems like a good place to get that 2-3 years experience I keep being told I need.

Workin' for the weekend.

reLAxed

2008-06-09T19:40:00.006-05:00

I started work today but I've enjoyed some major free time heretofore. There has been a lot of hanging out and skating and general fun things. A few pictures of interest:

Julian is kind of rad:

Chilling, waiting on some guy named Blaise -- ironically pronounced 'Blaze' -- to give us the hookup on a sweet spot (sweet spot not pictured):

On my bike ride to work:

Raddest BBQ in East LA:

Not quite 106, but a nice place:

Mega Ramp

2008-05-30T18:10:00.005-05:00

Laura's Mom heard that Bob Burnquist's mega ramp was right by their house in Vista, so we trekked over there to see it. It's pretty mega:

And this was just bonus scenery:

A Shark On Whiskey Is Mighty Risky

2008-05-28T02:30:00.002-05:00

But a shark on beer is a beer engineer.

Got a job in Long Beach and a nice place to stay in Echo Park for the summer.

New Indiana Jones is basically about L. Ron Hubbard and Xenu. Totally other level shit. George Lucas has lost his fool ass mind.

Settled

2008-05-26T01:21:00.001-05:00

In.

That is all.

Let's Go!

2008-05-23T18:28:00.000-05:00

LA SIGGRAPH presents "Maker Night"

When:
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
5:30 pm - Makers Load In and Set up
6:30-7:30pm - Social Hour Science Fair
7:30-10:30pm - Presentation

Where:
The Writers Boot Camp at Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave., Bldg I (the letter I, not the numeral 1)
Santa Monica, CA, 90404

Phone Phreaking W/ P

2008-05-16T23:36:00.001-05:00

Im a blogger, i blag. I dabble in it, i blaggle in it. Im a blaggler.

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Wordy Birdy

2008-05-16T23:29:00.001-05:00

What is up mobile blogging metaverse?!

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Actuallllllllyyyy...

2008-05-16T17:53:00.001-05:00

Pretty excited. Hit the ground running next Monday.

Having had dreams like this before

2008-05-09T19:25:00.003-05:00

Always afraid to go down the ramp and then off of it, but still making the attempt though expecting failure on the first try.

I've Decided To Wear My Thorn Of Crowns

2008-04-06T23:28:00.003-05:00

Inside out, upside down, back to front, all the way 'round.

My brother came into town this weekend and that was incredibly rad. I don't ever get to see him and this is actually the first time we've ever been able to hang out in outside of Rockwall since I left for school (nuts!). Good timing. Everybody was charmed, per usual.

I don't even really know what to say about this whole weekend except, shit got real?

I hate the waiting/worrying process after an interview. I'm not good at it. I am only good at multiplying visions and using similitudes. Teaching you long division and copping an attitude.

I think I'm actually making progress in re drawing better. That's a nice feeling, I was pretty intimidated for a long time.

Wreckless

2008-04-05T20:06:00.002-05:00

I had my final interview with TFA Wednesday. We'll see how that went on April 18th. I'd like to say that I did really well but I've heard that many people feel the same way about that interview and don't get it. TFA rejects 87% of applicants, did you know that? It's funny because I think a lot of people see TFA as something you can just do if you run out of other options. I don't think that's true any longer.

I'm pursuing other options too. Regardless, I'm moving to sunny skies come May. It's fun to be young and free!

Let Me Tell You About This Thing I Just Got Back

2008-03-12T13:21:00.002-05:00

It's called an appetite and it's hell of delicious.

Sometimes We Brainstorm About Silly Things

2008-03-11T04:39:00.002-05:00

Super Fun Times All The Time

2008-03-08T23:34:00.002-06:00

Skated for like 6 hours today. With Mitch and Cordia and Will. All over town. Ate some bulgogi burgers. Much laughs. Miles and Miles of Smiles and Smiles (thanks Elisa).

Becca moved out. Hell of a bummer.

But things are going super well.

F.T.D.M's

2008-02-24T19:11:00.002-06:00

I had a phone interview with Teach for America today. Two weekends ago I had a personal interview in LA with Teach California Charters. I'll hear back from TCC in a week or so, and TFA by March 7th. I hope everything went okay, phone interviews are sort of unnerving.

Having completely mentally checked out of my PhD program, I'm finding motivation to do homework a scarce commodity. Every day I start out with the best intentions of going to (my one) class and doing my homework and all that, but when I feel good and energetic I usually just end up skateboarding or cleaning. Skateboarding and cleaning is not getting my homework done, and I have a test this Thursday. I suppose it technically doesn't matter what happens, but it's foolish for me to screw off this badly. So -- with you as my witness -- I'm from this point forwards "getting it together" schoolwise. My living environment is also sort of chaotic. I could use a slower pace in that department. All Time Party Time sounded a lot cooler when it wasn't in my living room.

Thoughts Are All You Dream Of

2008-02-05T11:50:00.000-06:00

I've been feeling pretty well lately. Less stressed, less anxious. Collected. Eliminating caffeine from my intake has been a good thing (thanks Beau!). I haven't had dreams this vivid in probably over a year, which is terrible because dreams sort of rule. Did you know that dreams rule?

My interview to teach at charter schools in LA is in two weekends. I'm excited and pretty confident that it will be a good experience regardless of the outcome. I enjoy teaching and I enjoy talking to people, so it's hard for an interview like that to go wrong. A mid-semester trip to California is also not an unwelcome idea as a general notion, but I hope the weather can match the loveliness I've been surrounded with as of late.

Teaching is going pretty well this semester; I get to class on time, try my best, give my quizzes, and grade everything in my office as soon as I get back from class. Simple, smooth, fast. Oh dear, Oh dear.

This past weekend I went to my friends Zach and Tiffany's new house out in Spring, TX. They've been married for a while and they are both really cool folks. A bunch of us dudes helped him lay sod in his backyard, drank some beers, and played some sportz. It was rad. I didn't stay for dinner and instead went out to my friend Chattman's place for the night. I've been there a lot lately. We went to the Fiery Furnaces show and had a blast, ending up sitting in front of a Randall's at 3 in the morning eating a bunch of junk food. There were a lot of laughs. I'm glad he's doing better, it's always a pleasure to go visit.

Just passin' through.

Yours Truly.

You With Me, So It's Alright

2008-01-28T14:52:00.000-06:00

I was in the bathroom at the Rec today and three old men walked in together and proceeded to pee in the three stalls almost in unison. Then the three turned around and all washed and dried their hands together. They never said a word but they obviously knew eachother. I was changing and let me tell you I was pretty goddamn frightened. Powers of threeeee. Powers that be.

Later. Yours Truly.

South Scranton Playas Ball

2008-01-25T16:29:00.000-06:00

The little red truck is officially no longer mine. This is the end of an era. That truck is pretty fucking rad. I wouldn't be surprised if it lasts until the next century because it is a champion and prepared to weather any storm that comes its way. Godspeed, see you in hell.

North Scranton Homeboys Association

2008-01-21T22:19:00.000-06:00

Hello.

I talked with Dr. Rapp last Friday about not pursuing my PhD. Despite how much I psyched myself out about his possible reactions, he turned out to be very supportive of my decision and glad that I am thinking about teaching physics in high schools. It's nice because he will be a very strong reference in my applications. I also rescinded my applications to the fellowship offers which is a bit of a pity but I hope someone more motivated receives them! I definitely feel better.

Tomorrow will be my first day of teaching this semester. I'm really excited and currently making up a quiz. It won't be too hard, I just want to be sure everyone understands basic vector manipulation. I hope I can be better organized about my classes this semester, especially since I now teach three sections instead of two. My class load is also the standard load, which is by no means light. I maybe should have taken an elective instead of a qualifier course, but I never feel like backing down from a challenge. Hopefully it goes well, though Quantum Mechanics II already seems a bit in-depth.

This past weekend was fun, filled with people I lurhv. I was a bit tired after Zach's party on Friday night, and that feeling lasted for the rest of the weekend and most of today. I'm starting to feel better. Hopefully some good rest will fix me right up so I can kick some ass tomorrow.

I should get back to that quiz. Take it easy!

Yours Truly.

Caught In Your Superficial, Non-existent, Fairy Story...

2008-01-17T20:20:00.000-06:00

Wonderland.

I'm going to go have a little "chat" with Dr. Rapp tomorrow morning. I am more than a bit nervous. It's unfortunate that I have to disappoint him like this since he is a great advisor and if I wanted to be a theoretical physicist I don't think I could be in a better position. I don't want want to be a theoretical physicist. I like theoretical physics and some theoretical physicists are my absolute heroes, but I finally realized (completely!) that the life isn't for me. Teaching high school in L.A. sounds like a much better match! Wish me luck!

Throwing a party for Zach tomorrow, should be exciting. I like that I am able to throw a party, that's nice. Keep it coming, world.

Yours Truly.

Oh Deer

2008-01-13T23:24:00.000-06:00

Threw a birthday party for Hunter last night. It was a surprise and a success. Class officially starts tomorrow. I don't have to teach this week. I should get my shit together and stop eating so many hamburgers. That's simple enough. I've been feeling kind of wobbly lately, trying to find good footing. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. It really is. Transition period, I have to get a real job now. How strange! I'm one with the tide now, we're crashing up on the sandy shore. It's okay we'll all wash away one day. It isn't real.

Yours Truthfully.

This Is What Becca Just Told Me:

2008-01-07T21:50:00.000-06:00

That I should drink right now because the world might end in 2012. How right is she?

When You See Me Between Cole And Cahuenga

2007-12-22T21:26:00.000-06:00

I had a really great time in L.A.. It's a very exciting place and I felt alive and stimulated. The people I met were all incredible and it was nice to feel like you totally fit in. Not like I don't feel like I fit in with my friends that I have, but having it be everyone you meet is a surreal and wonderful experience. I'm probably still just a bit dazed and totally in love, but I don't caaare. You fall in love for a reason. Here are some selected pictures of the rest of my trip:

We went with Julian over to the Getty art center. Julian is kind of a big deal and a super nice guy.

Beau is a gentleman.

I'm pretty much a scrub and a tagalong.

This patio was kind of nice. It was a pretty day.

First.

A copy of this resided in the bathroom at Julian's house. A reminder to all women.

I've always liked this one.
Classiiiiic.

A not so good picture of a really good view.

Deluxe dining experience.

The details on this were incredible.

More viewsss.

We went to Astroburger at some point. I was a champion.

Outer Space.

Check out that sweaterrrr.

Ewwyerweird.

Haha no table yet.

It looks jumbled but it really isn't.

This is jumbled.

Saw the Walt Disney building. Pretty fucking nice.

So smooth.

Haha I laughed my ass off when I saw this. I thought these were all street signs.

We went to that Cafe at some point too, pretty much destroyed all of Hollywood and the surrounding hoods.

Elisa and Julian are a hot item. I am in lurrhv with both of them.

I dare anyone to take a radder picture of Beau.

These gay homeless guys living in the basement did a terrible job of fixing the steps. But it looks sort of like the steps are made of candy and there is some marshmallow ooze coming out.

We started the drive home, and I made sure to get some In 'n Out in Tuscon. Double-double animal styleee.

Destroyed.

We drove for fucking ever. It's impossibly long but Beau was a champion.

Beau had to take a nap at the gas station, so I walked into the desert and took this picture. I also made some phone calls.

The Thing was closed. Fuck.

We stopped off in the town of Sweetwater in search of a legend. The legend of pancakes that are 4 inches deep and as large as a man's forearm. We got sort of distracted since there are a lot of good sights in Sweetwater (who knew?). If you ever want those pancakes they are at a place called the Oak Street Cafe. It closes at 2pm so go early!

RARAGLAND

Went to this little eat place called Blondie's. I recommend it and you get to call the owner 'Mom'. It's in a nice little building with some neat quirks.

Looks good.

Listen: We became unstuck in time and ended up in Dallas. The buildings in Dallas have this digital charm that I really like. I'm home now.

So that is a lot of what I saw. I did a lot of things that aren't photographed but I'm sure you'll all hear that from me when I won't shut up about it. I really liked that town of Sweetwater, and I feel like it deserves some more exploring/antique shopping. Does anyone want to make a trip out to Marfa, TX sometime in the Spring? I've heard good things.

Yours Truly.

An Elegant Mess

2007-12-15T19:54:00.001-06:00

I've arrived. After Beau picked me up from the airport we went over to a party out in Val Verde. It was pretty neat, definitely a good segue from a plane trip. We stayed up pretty later and stayed over with a friend of his. I woke up and took some pictures, and took some throughout the day. I'm having fun.

I saw this when I woke up:

Cheerful.

Good marnin' Beau

Then we went home to Beau's house. I think the stairway is pretty awesome.

Pretty rad.

Beau's Haus.

It also has a pretty decent view.

There is a door to the roof!

Solar panels to soothe our ecosouls.

Home decor.

We went to Supreme after lunch and saw this retro skateboard art exhibit next door. It was alright.

There was more stuff, but the lighting was sort of off.

I took this really quick because I was afraid to be sniped:

Sorry if the pictures are a little bad, I'm taking them kind of quick as I go along. I hope you are having a good time. Bye!

Yours Truly.

Are You Honest When Noone's Looking?

2007-12-12T16:40:00.000-06:00

Can you summon honey from a telephone?

I thought it would be tight and then it was tight. Today was really good! I woke up fairly early, ate a good breakfast, drank good coffee, went to work and got everything I needed to get done...done! I received some good news about a class I wanted to take, the department opened up a new section taught by the best professor in the department and put me in there since I was waitlisted. I spread the news to a few good friends who I knew were taking the other class with a much harder fella. Positive.

I'm going to L.A. on Friday to hang out with Beau for a while, he says I should bring swim trunks which doubles the excitement! Also, my flight turns out is much better than I expected and I'll be arriving before midnight as I previously thought. This will be a good trip. Positive.

I had a good conversation with my friend Becca who came to pick me up from work since it was so cold today and I'd rather not walk. She had a good conversation with an associate dean tied to the womens' center that she put a lot of time into as a student but is concerned about now. Apparently it was a pretty productive conversation as she seemed to feel a lot better about the situation! Good good.

I'll bring my camera with me and hopefully be able to photo-update anything neat that happens while I'm there, else I'll be back after Christmas! Byee.

Yours Truly, <3.

Mother Nature's Disposition

2007-12-11T14:51:00.000-06:00

She don't mind, she don't care.

All the active irresponsibility I've taken this semester has stacked up and it's finally falling over on me. I'm okay with that really, and I'll be especially okay tomorrow. Even after 8pm I'll be alright. But right now it doesn't feel great, this sort of business goes against my grain and it's finally showing. It's hard to feel free when everyone feels entitled to so many hours of your day, hours that you signed away unknowingly for a pittance. At this point I'll be glad to just sleep it off tonight, and by tomorrow I'll realize that this was really the final cut between me and my mistaken path. I feel good about everything else but the worst part of an unnecessary burden is the point when you stand up to drop it. Then I'll operate clean again.

Stealth Jets on Okinawa Mission

2007-12-10T21:28:00.000-06:00

Sudden death is gliding by
Morbid messengers over nighttime city skies
With fiery tail and the doors of Hell
Cradled beneath their glossed black eyes

Dear little children,
Don't be afraid--
Your earthly beds will soon be made.
Dear little children,
Don't be afraid--
Heaven's debts are never left unpaid.

The silent shout of death's payload
A thousand laments yet untold
Gravity's rainbow with man-made eyes
No pot of gold at its end lies
Just the silent screams of a thousand souls
And a thousand muffled childrens' cries

Dear little children,
Don't you fret--
Playtime's up but you don't know yet
Dear little children,
Don't you weep--
You'll soon be hushed to your final sleep

And sleep is but 1/60th of death
The common denominator of our final breath
Impartial fractions, the product of blind-eyed toil
The poisoned seeds of history's soil

And the diameter of the bomb reaches far and wide
From the minds of men to the lash of Heaven's eye
Lines on maps made indivisible by
Makers of law and their blasphemous pride

Yours Truly -- unfortunately?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I should make note that I've referenced Yehuda Amichai's poem "The Diameter of the Bomb" in the above, and that the work above is copyright under a Creative Commons license. Yikes.

Then Someone Falls In Love

2007-12-09T15:45:00.001-06:00

And someone's beaten up.
And the senses being dulled are mine.

The Cowboys just rocked Detroit and it was epic. One of the greatest football games I've ever seen. I'm pumped. In unfortunate news my brother was involved in a tussle up in Lubbock and got pretty beat up. A girl was involved surely, but from all accounts it was a pretty unfair fight (roided up frat dude vs. my 5'9" brother) and as you can see from the photo evidence he was definitely blindsided. Literally:

:/.

Yours Truly.

Sightseeing

2007-12-08T19:46:00.000-06:00

I'm at that coffee place I go to sometimes. It's really fun to watch people and you see some especially interesting people here on a Saturday night. This guy keeps walking by and I can always tell it's him approaching because it sounds like a dog on leash and collar. He has all these chains and keys attached to his pants (straight up '00 Hot Topic style) and he walks with a lope. I mean an actual lope, his stride is elongated and he thrusts his head forwards with every step. He makes these ewwyerweird grunt noises and sort of murmurs under his breath as he walks by. Will he she be my best friend?

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

Yours Truly.

Modest Mouse

2007-12-07T15:00:00.000-06:00

People always front about distinguishing between "old" and "new" M.M.. Sure, Isaac's lyrics have toned down a bit with big publishing, but Marr's guitar more than makes up for that combined with their old sound. It's not like Isaac's lyrics have become awful either, in some sense I think the pressure to be a little less inflammatory has caused him to write more succinctly, as evidenced by another lyric I will lift here:

People as Places as People
--------------------------------------------
To answer a question
It'll probably take more
If you're already there
Well then you probably don't know
Well we were the people
That we wanted to know
And we were the places that we wanted to go
It's hard to get hold of
And hard to let go
Always something we look for
From the day we were born
Instead we're the people that we wanted to know
And we were the places that we wanted to go
Yeah we're the places that we wanted to go
We're the places that we wanted to go

And so on. It's really good, and quite fitting!

Yours Truly.

Do You Recognize That I

2007-12-02T16:42:00.000-06:00

Have stopped before you get too high on your own supplies.

This is it! These are the last days before everyone begins to go their own way. It's one of those delayed departures with all the last-minute revelry and indulgence that characterizes one. Here is where one expanding bubble bubbles on into smaller bubbles, and each one will expand and so on and so on. It's happened before and it happens all the time, but this one was especially good. I hope other people get to experience having friends like these.

Yours Truly, <3.

Most Pleasant

2007-12-01T18:01:00.000-06:00

Birthday party was definitely a success. I don't know if that will ever be topped in terms of how many people were there. Everyone had a good time, didn't get busted, no drama: everything was nice. Thank you to everyone who came out!

Yours Truly.

Birthday Eve

2007-11-29T21:27:00.000-06:00

Today is my birthday. This party is going to be epic, and I am probably going to get really drunk. Don't ever say I didn't do it huge, I been drinkin' on the green tea all week to get my fluids in check and my stomach on stretch. You know I'm a pro.

Wu Tang's new shit is the shit. I didn't think that they could get any better, but I am super excited about listening to this one. It's fucking awesome.

Contagion

2007-11-28T20:26:00.000-06:00

I spent the last 45 minutes over dinner talking about why I'm going to quit my PhD and what I might be doing afterwards. I think I got some of the postdocs so excited that they might quit themselves. I'm only speaking tongue in cheek, I'm sure they won't, but it makes me feel more excited when others get excited, unlike my advisor. He is an impossibly singular person, it's really nuts.

Prithee, My Dear

2007-11-27T19:16:00.000-06:00

Why are we here?

If you don't know already, I get obsessive over particular words and phrases. This happens a lot with technical terms. Here are some that I like right now:

1.) Totally antisymmetric Levi-Civita tensor

2.) Kernel

3.) Geodesic

4.) Characteristic Polynomial

5.) Pseudodifferential Operator

6.) Manifold

$$$

2007-11-26T12:49:00.001-06:00

I spent a lot of it.

People

2007-11-25T22:36:00.001-06:00

I'm always tempted to lift entire song lyrics here but I usually resist that temptation. Today I think I won't because David Berman is a poet.

Moments can be monuments to you
If your life is interesting and true.
It's just the same for a man or a girl,
The meaning of the world lies outside the world.

People love people and they understand
if you wanna renovate your background mind
(a federal woman needs a municipal man)
People gotta synchronize to animal time.

You can't change the feeling
but you can change your feeling about the feelings in a second or two
People always come around.

I'm studying the ceiling on a little afternoon
and when I paint my dining room
People gonna come around.

I love to see a rainbow from a garden hose
lit up like the blood of a centerfold
I love the city and the city rain,
suburban kids with biblical names.

People ask people to watch their scotch.
People send people up to the moon.
When they return, well there isn't much.
People be careful not to crest too soon.

The drums march along at the clip of an I.V. drip
like sparks from a muffler dragged down the strip.
I really hope you'll come around.

It's sunny and seventy-five. It feels so good to be alive.
Come on baby don't stay inside.
Everybody's coming out tonight.

Oh Dear

2007-11-25T12:03:00.000-06:00

Charles Bukowski was an idiot, how can you write anything interesting hung over this badly?

Man, I had some weird dream about the Kid A cd last night, talk about creepy! I kept seeing the cd cover in all sorts of weird renditions and such. Drunk brains are hilarious.

I'm Freezin' My Yams Off

2007-11-21T17:54:00.000-06:00

It is cold as hell up here in D-Town. It's good to be around family though, it tends to recenter my thought patterns and whatnot. I hope everyone else has a super good Thanksgiving! I'm sure you will.

Yours Truly.

Turns Out

2007-11-19T20:05:00.000-06:00

I'm the best at half-assing. I haven't been to quantum but for maybe 2 days out of the past 3 weeks, just took a test and definitely did mostly correctly 4/5 problems. If this is anything like the last test, 4/5 problems means an solid A. We'll see. I don't even give a shit about it though, this is all so later'd. Financial engineering world better prepare to be rocked.

Doodlez Pt. 2

2007-11-18T19:59:00.001-06:00

You Were Right When You Said

2007-11-16T16:08:00.001-06:00

Manic depression's a frustrating mess.

The Coffee Tastes Exceptionally Bitter This Morning

2007-11-14T10:40:00.000-06:00

There is a difference. I just got a phone call from one of my students who stopped coming to lab in the middle of the semester. He was one of the students who was doing well on all the quizzes and definitely understood the material, he even did pretty well on the exams. But if you don't get at least 70% of the lab points you cannot pass this class.

I didn't really know why he was missing the labs, but I really should have investigated more thoroughly. From the conversation we just had it turns out his mother has some form of terminal cancer and is trying to go through chemotherapy but hospitals are denying their insurance claims. Since his father isn't able to handle the bureaucratic work of dealing with hospitals and insurance, K.A. has been going to Dallas every weekend to spend time with his mother and try and get everything sorted out. Lab is on Mondays at 8AM and he just started missing it. After missing about four of the labs, it's impossible for him to pass and impossible for him to move on without passing this physics course.

He emailed roughly 2 weeks ago about his lab grade at which point I directed him to the professor of the class to discuss anything we could do. 2 weeks ago was already much too late to do anything. If I had been a bit proactive with my students I could have contacted him the 2nd lab he missed and had him move to a section later in the week to do his labs. I know that I cannot be held responsible for making my students get to class and pass everything, but I don't care whether I can directly be held responsible for it. I know I should have done better. This whole situation makes me feel so self-centered, because here I am worrying about my near perfect life and here's a kid who's worrying about his Mom dying on the weekends. That was basically a phonecall from G-d, my conscience, or who knows what. It's divine intervention, surely.

Yours truly.

I forgot a title for this, how about "Suck It"?

2007-11-13T16:55:00.000-06:00

Oh the work week, how I love it. I saw someone ghost riding the whip the other day on campus, that was pretty awesome. He was definitely was sort of embarassed when I called him out on it. If you're gonna do it you gotta own it, that's my tip for pulling anything off. A heroin addiction looks real bad if you're acting like a pussy who's concerned about a few rotten teeth and track marks, but if you're that guy that does it and everyone knows does it but still shows up to parties and acts like he's fine then you're probably just genetically better than everyone else around you. Just quit before you're 25*, it'll be fine.

I need to sell my truck ASAP, so I can update on my b-boy status with a Benzo. Maybe I'll do that with all my free time**.

Yours truly, <3.

* If you're 25 and still on smack just promise me you'll quit by 30.
** Do some work you asshole!

Epicly Later'd

2007-11-11T16:45:00.000-06:00

Last night was a fun one. There was the annual Town Hall Old vs. New party where I saw some friends getting mad sauced. I wasn't drinking because I was driving the 'burban party bus. That party was a pretty okay time but I knew that the other dance party was going to be way more rad. I thought it would be tight and then it was tight. We went over there and it was basically everyone we didn't know, which is good. The whole apartment had been turned into a splatter painted dance fest, and it turned out to be a pretty epic time with Hunter djing. Much dancing and much walking it out.

The title of this post is how I feel about physics.

Take It Easy

2007-11-10T12:16:00.000-06:00

This new skateboard is so nice! This is such a fun thing to do.

I want to apologize if I have been unloading on people excessively as of late, I need to chill out and quit overthinking things so much. I think I'm just worried about quitting grad school and what that means for the rest of my life, and worries like that tend to worm their way into other things.

In other news, I was remembering this crazy idea I had when I was about 5 or 6 years old. I remember being so convinced (either I convinced myself or someone older than me did) that the next Teenage Mutant Turtle Movie was going to feature the turtles "evolving" and getting rid of their shells. I remember hyping it up so much! I hope noone remembered my hype by the time the next movie came out, else I probably lost a whole lot of elementary school cred. STORY OF MY LIFE.

I've also been thinking more about why I don't feel good doing physics anymore. No matter what anyone says, doing research in theoretical physics requires a significant amount of ego. You have to be confident and ready to disrespect the old guard and you need to believe that you are the one who's going to figure something new out. More importantly, you have to enjoy that sort of interaction. As I've grown older I think I've lost more and more of an "ego" . That is, I don't care about being the one to figure something new out. It's still nice to understand a new idea or have a fresh one, but it doesn't really drive me like it used to. It's fun when everyone tells you you're a smart guy, but that doesn't last. Nor does it really add up to a totally healthy way to go about things. There's a lot of talk about a scientific community, but I've been to conventions -- it's scientific, that's for sure, but a community can't really be based upon a bunch of people bragging to eachother about their latest result. It can also get really old talking about physics ALL the time! I'd rather use these technical skills I've gained to deal with something less tangentially related to the world. Money moves people and people move money. Electrons seem to do whatever the fuck they want. So, I have some ideas. People ideas.

Physics Fan For Life

2007-11-08T22:51:00.001-06:00

So I finally got the tattoo, as I mentioned previously. Here is a picture:

I'm pretty pleased and it is healing up rather nicely. Even if I don't continue with physics forever I don't think I'll ever be bored with the idea of Feynman diagrams and the processes they represent. Even if they are made obsolete by a superior technique or -- G-d forbid -- an exact solution, they are still a neat representation of the major intellectual advances made in the latter 100 years of this past millenium.

Life is fun, it's nice to enjoy it for the simple day-to-day things. I don't feel like compartmentalizing or making any predictions about the future, because the present is here to take advantage of each second. How much fun is that!?

<3

Ehhhh, Ya Got Any Gum?

2007-11-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I can be the most awkward human. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.

Done Did It

2007-11-06T22:41:00.000-06:00

Done got a silly picture on my arm. Pictures forthwith.

Built to Spill

2007-11-04T18:58:00.000-06:00

My over-analysis engine is always turned on. Please someone stop it. I'm going to try and really get some work-related responsibility going on this week, for real though. Of course, Tattoo Tuesday isn't exactly the most responsible thing I've done in my life but damn it's going to be the sitch. Here goes nerd tattoo #1.

Also, I started feeding this cat that hangs out around our house and now it follows me all the way to the edge of George Bush when I'm walking to school. I think I just adopted a friend. <3

Oh Man Oh Man Oh Man Let Me Tell You Somethin'

2007-11-03T13:47:00.000-05:00

I had fun last night. The awkward favorite kind. Went to an art show in Bryan and ran into the most bizarre subsets of people I know, all of whom I have some reason or another to be awkward with. Jesus. It was a super good time overall though.

I'm going to ATX tonight tonight, M.O.S. going to be so much fun my favorite people are going. Will see you all soon. Byee.

The Plight of the Flightless Bird

2007-11-02T11:30:00.000-05:00

Went to the Ptarmigan last night with Ryan Brown. They kept giving me all these free beers but now I'm paying for them. It's hard to think of anything interesting at all when you're hungover. Maybe I won't drink this weekend and just have fuuuun?

It Wasn't Bad At All!

2007-10-31T15:39:00.000-05:00

Amicable.

This week is fucking killing me man! But I am pretty positive about my NSF application, it's turning out rather well. I sure do have a lot to say about something that I'm not sure I want to do. Going to talk about tattoos on Friday with friend, exciting. Buying skateboard decks in bulk, creative. Grading tons of papers and doing my homework, productive. Going to my group meeting in 15 minutes, not T-H-R-I-L-L-E-D. Going to LA to visit Beazur in Decembery, going to slam dunk it.

I Am Not Excited About This

2007-10-28T19:46:00.001-05:00

Let's hope it isn't too bad. The burden is on me anyways.

On a lighter note, I watched Dune so much as a kid that certain childlike impressions of it were made on me. Maybe that's why I like it so much still. Anyways, the score for Dune is done by Toto. Toto Jackson right? Michael Jackson's brother? Whoops!

Rattled By The Rush

2007-10-28T01:13:00.000-05:00

It's too cold to walk home
Sleeping in your office is rad
Caffeined out.

Family Matters

2007-10-26T13:28:00.001-05:00

I love talking to my Dad sometimes. He has these moods where he is a very calm, well thought-out human with a neat outlook on life and he appreciates a lot of the minutiae that existence offers, and I think that he imparted a strong sense of that in me when I was young. Definitely thankful.

Two days ago I was forced, painfully, to remember an old adage my grandfather (Papaw) has often said: "You must be smarter than the machinery you intend to operate." I was using the high-powered stapler at the Cyclotron -- the one that's capable of stapling a sheaf 100 pages thick -- when it decided to jam up. Oh me, oh my, clever engineer boy to the rescue. So I started fiddling around with the ejector and I had one finger still under it, and I guess I loosened up whatever was jamming it with the surprise result that all the pent up, frustrated forces had now jammed a huge staple straight into the side of my index finger and right out the other side. My friend standing next to me at the copier just looked at it and asked, "Are you fucking serious?" It looked so damn bizarre, but I pulled the staple out and I guess it's okay now. I'll see you guys in a week or so with lockjaw.

The Turing (2,3) machine is universal. That's pretty neat, but it also still blows my mind. Also, did you know that a topological 2-sphere is evertible? (You can turn it inside out). The same doesn't hold true for a 1-sphere (topological circle). Watch this video:

Turning a Sphere Inside Out

:)

2007-10-25T16:52:00.000-05:00

Axiom of Choice

2007-10-23T16:08:00.001-05:00

You can choose to view things however you want. There's been no judgment passed so any offense or ill will you take is completely and arbitrarily determined from your perspective. Nothing about stupidity was ever said and not even close to implied, but a little consideration and responsibility concerning emotions is not unwarranted. Feel free to disagree. I'm just thinking in the best interest of friends, and I won't put a heavy load on you if you won't put a heavy load on me. Empathize. Don't try and make me feel bad because I act in a way that protects me. At this point in my life where my life is a big question mark, I can only value things on a friendly level. Don't misconstrue.

Every Winter for 22 Years

2007-10-22T12:30:00.000-05:00

I think I need medication.

Operation G.Y.S.T. Pt. 2

2007-10-20T17:38:00.000-05:00

So I've decided to quit smoking. Again.

That last time I "quit" smoking I ended up switching from American Spirits to Pall Malls, which is actually worse for your health. I'm not sure I can switch to anything worse than Pall Malls, except maybe Lucky Strikes or anything menthol. The psychology involved in quitting is really strange. I tore up and threw away a half pack of cigarettes this morning and it was actually difficult to do. There's something about knowing you don't have access to cigarettes that makes your brain start to freak out. I haven't smoked in maybe 4 hours but I'm definitely feeling it, a big ol' nic fit. Even as I write this my mind is playing with the idea that it's stupid to quit because I won't be able to concentrate on my take-home midterm tonight, that in all reality I told myself that I would quit tomorrow not today. Yikes! Smoking is pretty fucked.

Things I Want To Do With You

2007-10-19T15:37:00.000-05:00

Let "You" be a variable.

1.) Let's go swimming.

2.) Let's go play basketball.

3.) Let's go bowling.

4.) Let's plant a garden or some flowers.

5.) Let's talk about the weather.

6.) Let's go on a long bike ride.

7.) Let's go on a short bike ride that ends in a picnic.

8.) Let's go skydiving.

9.) Let's jam on some instruments together.

10.) Let's fly a kite.

11.) Let's go camping.

12.) Let's rent a rowboat.

13.) Let's all cook a nice meal together.

14.) Let's try to draw what we are seeing.

15.) Let's go skateboarding.

Are You My Friend Or Not?

2007-10-18T14:21:00.000-05:00

We (friends) were sitting in my living room the other day and I asked if anyone wanted to watch The Big Lebowski or Dune.

Spencer noted that this is equivalent to me asking: "Are you my friend or not?"

So true.

A Bit Off The Mark

2007-10-17T16:20:00.000-05:00

A lovely girl and a close friend, but nice try.

Close!
But it really ain't nunya business.

Donut Burger Fantasy

2007-10-16T14:19:00.000-05:00

I found out today that my friend and colleague Xingbo has never eaten a cheeseburger other than a McDonald's cheeseburger. That's ridiculous and will be soon corrected.

Whenever it starts to get cold and dreary like this I always go into donut burger fantasy mode for a week or so, maybe to add on a layer of fat to prepare for the ever so cold Texas winter.

I Wish Every Day Was Like Sunday

2007-10-15T23:42:00.000-05:00

A lot of fun happened this weekend, culminating in Sunday. I took notes and this all deserves a cogent treatment, so let me chew on this one a bit!

<3

The Sun Also Rises

2007-10-10T16:49:00.000-05:00

Everyone around me is anxious and this in turn is making me anxious, though I really don't have much reason to be. My life is pretty stable and my responsibilities are reasonable. I am employed, paid, physically healthy, and busy with my own work. Life is changing in the sense that more people whom I've become accustomed to hanging out with are leaving soon, but I always make new friends and I shouldn't really worry about that. I'm meeting goals, academically, physically and socially. I can't really tell where this nervousness comes from, it might be totally unfounded. I need a new footing but I want this to be something totally internal, a real solid anchor of my own that lets me keep sailing. Yadadaimean?

The weather is perfect today and everyone is enjoying themselves. Victory has been had on multiple fronts, and I feel that I'm going to do really well on my first test tomorrow (crossed fingers). If I'm a little iffy lately, bear with, I am a work in progress.

<3

Update Your Vocab

2007-10-08T23:59:00.001-05:00

From now on going to work is called "high-fiving the money monster".

Who needs a house out in Hackensack, is that all you get for your money?

2007-10-05T14:20:00.000-05:00

They (the MSC) are playing Billy Joel's "Movin' Out" in February. I am hell of excited.

Tron

2007-10-03T19:50:00.000-05:00

I think I need a baby supercomputer to do these calculations. Or a supercomputer baby. I think they are interchangeable. I need a supercomputer, baby.

Yeah I Talk To Folks, What Of It?

2007-10-02T22:14:00.000-05:00

I was outside the library the other night getting my Pall Mall on, and I sat down next to this Indian guy name Api and started chatting him up. He was an interesting guy who's doing a master's in urban architecture and I've always found architecture pretty interesting. I asked him about urban sprawl and he lit me up with an idea I'd never really thought of before: The primary reason behind our current trend for cities to overgrow and become the ugly, inefficient monstrosities they do is a simple lack of engineering common sense.

Every time the roads become clogged and the time to travel between two points in a given densely populated region is decidedly too long, we increase the number of lanes and highways in that area. If you increase the number of lanes, all other things being constant, the time it takes to travel between the points decreases, and decreases for further areas as well (we can't just widen one small section of a highway). It then necessarily becomes an option for those living closer into the city to move further out and experience the same time delay. So by attempting to alleviate the problem of traffic congestion, we expand the radius of population able to work in a region. This will cause buildings to be built of course, but not high density urban buildings, rather the typical short, wide spaced suburban buildings we see so often. As time goes on, the congestion reaches these further points, and we continue on ad infinitum. The other reasons to build more dense urban centers and public transportation are obvious, but this one is often overlooked I think. The whole "only build up when you run out of space" mentality is flawed, a proactive approach would be the only way to solve the problem without a complete rededication of space, which is very costly. Government engineers are nuts.

A Red Letter Day

2007-09-30T17:53:00.000-05:00

Spencer and I have officially started our rap careers. He's a man who is into large drinking containers and so has donned the name 'Big CUP', aka 'Big C-U-P' and I'm gonna be the straight up 44 oz copilot 'The Fly Emirate'. We already made a rap about sandwiches, who knows what we'll treat up next. Stay tuned?

I've been working a lot lately and that's a good thing because I have a lot of work! Research is a harsh mistress and I may not always treat her right, but I still love her (And that was Merle Haggard with his new hit "I Kiss My Baby With My Fist."). My physical intuition has been riled up lately and I've been making some good progress, and I am definitely reinterested in my project. That's one thing you learn in research projects that can last for years: you have to learn how to re-fall in love with the problem you're solving each time. It's not simple, but the honeymoon phase is always nice. I've also realized that if my ideas work and I run them to fruition, the good outcome is that I solve the HBT puzzle. That's sort of a long standing problem, and it would be nice to solve it while I'm a grad student. The bad outcome is I close off another case, and maybe gain some insight about how we really need to approach this problem. Teaching is good, and I'm glad I like it. Classes are so-so, but I always shine when tests come around.

I'm getting to know the Chinese grad students pretty well -- there sure are a lot of them -- and that's been fun so far. They have an odd idolation of American culture, and I am just too happy to indulge them. They have been encouraging me to learn Mandarin, and have been giving me mini-lessons. It's SVO so it's a lot like English really, and in the ways it isn't it's simpler. Efficient. My kind of language.

I haven't been able to order the trucks or wheels for my new skateboard yet, and that's a bit of a bummer. It'll happen soon though, and that's exciting. From just standing on the deck it feels a lot better than what I was skating on before, and that makes me feel more comfortable about protecting my neck -- watch ya step kid.

<3

Why you do dat

2007-09-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

Gnuplot freaks me out sometimes:

Which one is it?

I'm worried. Dr. Rapp has invited Scott Pratt (his name is probably unknown to you, but he's a huge figure in the field I am in, and the expert on the research I'm currently doing) here in early November. The trip is handled under the guise that Dr. Pratt will give a colloqium, which he really will but the main point is to discuss my research. The thing about that is: my research is still incredibly immature, and my actual physical understanding of the problem is still lacking. I guess I need to bone up and derive everything from first principles instead of using my intuition, but I also need results by then! In conclusion, call me Cyclotrent.

Day by Day Basis

2007-09-18T23:46:00.000-05:00

It's becoming less and less clear to me if I'm going to continue for my PhD. If I live in a ghost town long enough I might become a ghost.

It's easy to the step; you just gotta flip it, stick it, see ya later bye.

2007-09-18T14:56:00.000-05:00

Bought a new deck, it's in the post.

Hallelujah.

Robert Jordan is an Asshole

2007-09-17T11:14:00.000-05:00

Way to finish some books before you died. Let's hope your progeny isn't as retarded as Brian Herbert.

I saw a Delorean on the road yesterday -- that was awesome. I also done messed my truck up something retarded. That wasn't awesome, but bitches can't take me to jail.

Very Large Array

2007-09-12T22:24:00.000-05:00

I've always wanted to go visit the the VLA in New Mexico. I consider radio telescopes to be modern wonders of the world and much more grand in scope than any of what we call the Seven. Don't get me wrong, hanging gardens, pyramids, and massive statues are swell, and surely they were great achievements of the time but their aspirations were constrained by the limits of human knowledge at that point. These were civilizations that had not yet grasped the non-uniqueness of intelligence and life, and humanity was an accepted concept; the VLA seems a poignant indication of beings that are beginning to accept fundamental aspects of the universe and their own derivative biology. I think it's good we turn our eyes outwards and begin to ask and expect answers to questions that are larger than our own lifespans. It is one REALLY big universe and we are one tiny planet.