Born Free

Greetings! I am currently writing this from my new operating system (Ubuntu) on my new hard drive (60 Gb). This is significant because I used to be running on 40 Gb, and up until last semester was only on 10. Also, this hard drive was completely free, thanks to a box of electronics that Shutter gave me. Hooray for free stuff!

Technically a Gold-Titanium Alloy

Today, I saw Iron Man. Perhaps this is just the engineer talking, but it was incredible. It also helps that his suit is the colors of 41. Iron Man is now my favorite superhero. Period. (Yes, Paco, it was even better than Batman). And if you have yet to see it, you need to watch to the end of the credits. Just so you know.

I want my own suit now. I probably can't get it that well fitting or with nearly as many features, but just a mechanized exoskeleton would be cool. To quote the movie: "I really like this suit!"

I'll have to get started on my exoskeleton as soon as I finish my Dr. Octopus arms. (Due to the segmental nature of the Doc Ock arms and the complexity of ergonomics, the exoskeleton would take quite a bit longer to design.)

Speaking of Doc Ock arms...

I am currently working at Gospel For Asia (or GFA for short) in Dallas. It is a really cool organization focused almost entirely on reaching people groups that have never heard the gospel before. Due to the sensitive political nature of some of the countries that we're working in, I cannot publish on the internet everything that we are doing. You should check out their website, which has the "clean" version, or talk to me in person if you want to know more.

Anyway,

This last Friday, there was a company picnic during the afternoon. The theme of this picnic was "GFA Superheroes," and we were all supposed to come dressed up as our favorite superhero. Well, I don't really have a favorite superhero that would be fun to dress up as (at least, I didn't before I saw Iron Man), so I decided to bend the rules a little bit and dress up as the person who has my favorite super power. That's right, I went as the maniacal scientist himself: Dr. Octopus.



Major thanks to my roommate, Ian, for helping me build the costume. The bottom two claws are attached to the poles in my hands by fishing wire, and by moving the poles I could "throw" the arms ahead of me as I walked, producing a very cool walking motion. I had planned to be able to open and close the top two claws through fishing wire strung down through the poles and attached to my fingers, but the wires got tangled and mixed up with hot glue at 2:00 in the morning the night before, and the poles had already been glued to the claws, making it nearly impossible to re-string, so Ian and I just decided to make the claws static. It still looked pretty cool, though.

Then things got interesting when another intern decided to dress up as Spiderman (he had a mask, just not in this picture):

Though she didn't seem to be too bothered by it, one of the older ladies at GFA made the comment that my costume was "terrorizing the little children." However, as you can see from the kids trying to attack my with my own claws, this was definitely not the case.

There was actually a contest, and my getup won "Best Overall Costume." The only bad part was that it was a Texas summer afternoon, and I was wearing long black pants with a long black coat. It got EXTREMELY hot. Even for me.

Mad With Power!

I am currently working at Gospel For Asia as part of a 4-week internship. However, they don't really have any positions related to engineering, so I have been placed in the IT department. This is a bit odd since I don't really know that much about computers, but I've been able to find enough on programming forums to be somewhat productive thus far.

One perk, though: the applications I working concern remotely adjusting printer drivers, which means I am learning script that works at the base level of Windows. The scripts that I write operate regardless of the programs that are open and without showing any sign of their existence.

Excellent....

The ability to open, close, and alter programs, enter keystrokes, and locate system information while being nearly untraceable is giving me... ideas.

I wonder if I could write a program that would write and activate copies of itself...

Chicken!

Good Evening.

There is currently a metal rooster perched on top of my computer, and I am happy.

Yesterday was Hootenanny, for which I performed two comedy skits, one by myself and one with Play-Doh. Since I had one in each act, I had to be at rehearsals from 6-11 each night Tuesday through Friday, which made my week rather interesting. But it is now over, and my solo skit placed third, for which I received a trophy in the shape of a rooster. The other skit went well, too, but it has been floating around YouTube recently, and so the judges probably didn't think as highly of it.

In addition to placing in Hootenanny, I have also figured the classes I have left to take, and I will only have to take an average of 15 hours a semester for the next two years. Which means that, hopefully, things will get easier after this semester.

Hopefully.

Maybe I'll also have time to study magnetism over the summer as well.

Stardust is awesome. And so is spring break. Also, this is February.

I'm Not Normal

What better way to wrap up the Christmas break than by using vector calculus, the golden ratio, and trigonometry to calculate the angles on the faces of this zonohedron:

Now I just need to figure out a way to build it while maintaining its lattice-like structure. Bent wire, perhaps?

Secrets and Lies

If you are like me, then you have heard that sinks and toilets drain one direction in the Northern Hemisphere, the other direction in the Southern Hemisphere, and straight down on the equator. This difference is due to the Coriolis force provided by the Earth's rotation.

LIES!
Nothing but filthy lies!

I shall now give you the Christmas gift of truth.

It is true that the rotation of the Earth does produce a Coriolis force, and that this force is responsible for the rotation of certain weather systems like hurricanes. However, this is only because such systems are very large and develop over long periods of time. The magnitude of Coriolis force is directly related to rotation speed. The Earth only rotates once per day, so the resulting force is very small. Given time, it will affect large bodies of fluids initially at rest, but things like toilet flushes are too small and happen too quickly to be influenced by Coriolis (the bowl would also have to be circular). Those rotations are instead determined by such things as the way in which they are filled and the shape of the container.

This site offers a more in-depth explanation that I found very enlightening.

Or just ask an Australian.

Merry Christmas!

We forgot November!

I just realized today that we forgot to post something for November. I'm sorry November :( .
In any case, life in the suite is going on as usual...we still eat Ramen, we still do lots of studying and homework....we still have lots of fun. This week is finals week, which means that on Thursday night we can forget about this whole school thing and pretend life is still easy! If only that were true about the rest of the semester...easy...oh well, it is almost over. Until next time...'may your days be merry and bright!'

There are beings there that do not sleep.

Aaaaaaaaand it's 4:00 AM!

Hooray for Digital Electronics!

At least it's Friday.

Well that's new.

I tried to give blood today, but wasn't allowed to because my iron content was 1% too high. That has never happened before. I didn't even know they had an upper limit.

It could be because this was a different organization than the Red Cross and they may have different standards. They had a different testing method, too. They used a centrifuge instead of the buoyancy method.

In other news, my work as a junior member of the ACL senior project has started. The goal of the project is to design an accurate model of the mechanical forces experienced by the human knee during and after ACL failure. My job this semester is basically to learn everything that Nathan Green has been doing the past two years so I can continue his work after he leaves. This is done through a series of research assignments that so far seem difficult but doable.

Another fun activity that I've recently gotten myself into is joining the Longview Chorus and Symphony for their upcoming performance of...

...dum da da dah...

Beethoven's 9th Symphony!
(Saturday, September 29 in the new Belcher Center)

Freude!

Some Say The World Will End In Fire...

This is a Red Caribbean, a particularly hot type of Habenero pepper:

This is what it feels like in your mouth:

I should know. I ate one today.

I would strongly advise that you do not.

For comparison, a Jalapeno is rated at 3,000 - 6,000 SHU (Scotville Heat Units), whereas this thing weighs in at around 350,000 SHU. VERY HOT.

I got the pepper from a supervisor at work who grows various types of hot and spicy things. He stops eating them at around the Jalapeno level, but grows the hotter ones for their bushes and to watch people at work suffer. I had eaten previous varieties that weren't quite as hot (serannos and lemon drops) and had been joined in doing so by several other guys. I told him that I was interested in getting a bag or two of the hotter varieties to take with me to college for various malevolent purposes, and he said he would bring me an extremely hot one. He didn't disappoint. For some reason, no one else wanted to eat this one and some were told not even to touch it. This was on Monday. At the time, I had a blister on my tongue (perhaps from the previous peppers?) and didn't want to aggravate it, so I told him I would eat it later. I got such a large response from people who wanted to see me eat it that I told them I would bring it back to work and eat it during break time on Wednesday.

I managed to eat the entire thing without touching the quart of milk or package of crackers I brought with me, and am told that my face turned as red as the pepper. Tears started streaming from my eyes. My mouth was pain, and it was getting worse. I quickly downed 3/4 of the milk and several of the crackers and the pain started to subside. After 10 minutes, my mouth was back to normal, but my face remained red for an hour and my stomach started to hurt. This hurt came and went throughout the day even though I continued to eat crackers and yogurt, but I can deal with pain, right? Apparently my system cannot, and it emergency evacuated the contents of my stomach up and out an hour before my shift was over. Fortunately, I had seen it coming and was prepared for it, but the pepper still burned my mouth almost as much as before. I was glad I had some milk left, and came home early.

Before today, I was seriously thinking about taking these different potencies of pepper back to college with me and using them as part of "extended orientation," much like the hot pepper-eating contest I had with Dex when I was a freshman. Perhaps I would even use them as weaponry if 41 was ever wronged. But now that I have actually experienced the hottest pepper available to me, I will ask for no more of it. I will hold no contest, nor will I use them in retaliation. Pain is one thing, but I draw the line once something actually upsets your system. At most, I think I might take a bag of the milder serannos to keep me awake during all-nighters.

And I think I'll avoid spicy food for a while.

End Of Line.

In my last post, I mentioned that I was designing a retractable desk for my room. Well, after several adjustments and re-engineering episodes (our first try didn't fit through the door), it was completed somewhere around two weeks ago. And now that a digital camera has come within my grasp, I can share some pictures of it:

Ta-da!

The three arms on either side allow me to lower the table top onto my bed when I want to work on puzzles or other things...








...then raise it up to the ceiling when I want to go to sleep.




The top of the table is designed to rest snugly on the outer frame and will not move on its own when in the raised position. Even so, I secure it in place with a bungee cord to keep it from crashing down on me during the night.

The reason the desk and only the desk is black is because of something I remembered from my days in wood shop. After we finished each project, our teacher would cover it with a clear coat of spray paint to seal all minor cracks. I thought this would be a good idea since the plywood boards weren't of very high quality and I didn't want to get any splinters while working. We didn't have any clear spray paint, so I chose to make the desk black, if for no other reason that to look like Master Control from the movie Tron.

The project on the near side of the desk is a puzzle given to me by Trolley, and the papers on the far side are the products of my latest en devour: teaching myself discrete mathematics using an "obsolete" textbook that TOME was giving away. I'm probably never going to take the class at school, so I might as well learn the stuff now. I'll have no computer major outsmarting me!