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Frustration

Frustration has seemed to be the theme of orientation for me. Berkeley and I are really not quite off on the right foot, and it's a struggle out of the gate. The adviser switch is now complete. I've registered (mostly) for classes, but am waitlisted for one of two actual classes. Last night before I went to bed, I found out that I'm TAing Organic II. Unfortunately, I can't go to either of the lecture sections on Tuesdays for the class because I have lab (for that class) over one of the sections, and one of my classes directly over t'other. So once a week I'll be watching the webcast version. Ugh.

Today, like many days during orientation, was pock-marked with awkward chunks of free time. After fire extinguisher training I had a TA meeting for Orgo II, then an awkward chunk of time. After library orientation, there was another awkward chunk of time. Eventually there was a mixer for the first-years, which was nice. After that, I found my friends who had the LAN party last week. It was happening again, so I had dinner with them on the way.

This is where things really went downhill for my day (both literally and figuratively). I had no laptop, having not planned on going to a LAN party. This wasn't going to be a problem, but an external mouse would be good. I was short the external mouse. I went anyway. When I arrived with some of the other people, not all the computers had the requisite software installed, and it was taking quite a while to get it installed. About this time, I realized that I was 3 or so miles away from my house, and that I didn't have bike lights in my backpack. The sun was going to set well in advance of the game getting started, let alone finished, so I decided to cut my losses (since it was going to be a pain to get the game started and then get home) and go home. I needed to stop by the grocery store anyway.

I left right after sunset, such that I could get to the grocery store still under ambient light without being too dangerous. On the way there, I was pedaling hard up one of the small hills when my gear shifted unexpectedly (as it is wont to do) and nearly threw me from the bike. Fortunately, I pulled my toe up off the pavement before I went down, and managed to stay upright. When I stopped at the next stop sign, I found a small droplet of blood where the pedal had come around and hit me in the calf.

Somewhere in the next block or three, I noticed that my handlebars were rotated further forward than usual. I pushed hard on them, and they moved back to where they should be. A block or so later, they had moved again. By this point I was quite frustrated with the whole expedition. I finally made it to the store, locked up, and got my cereal. A quick check of my leg showed that the bleeding had stopped with the one drop. Just a scratch---"'tis not wide as a door, nor deep as a well."

Upon completion of the grocery shopping, it was getting quite dark, and I decided that with no lights, a bum shifter, loose handlebars, a short temper, and a bloody leg, I should cut my losses and walk up the hill with the bike. I got home tired but in one piece. Put the bike away, moved the cereal to its home, and came up to my room. The spot for the bike lights was empty. I looked once more into my bag. They'd been there the whole time. That was frustrating.

Tomorrow is the first day of class. I'm taking Statistical Mechanics and Quantum, in addition to TA training, a couple of seminars, and finding a research group. It looks as though things are pretty much ironed out from my switching divisions from synthetic to physical, give or take my TAing organic. It'd be really nice, though, if I knew I was in off the waitlist for Stat. Mech.

The adventure starts in the morning!

Orientation

Orientation has started, and seems to be going along okay. There have been some minor issues---I was placed in the synthetic division, when I should be in the physical division---so I may be teaching organic for non-majors (read: pre-meds). I got some of this squared away today, and will try to get more dealt with as time goes on. Socializing is beginning to start, but of course I don't do much of it (or do it well). We've been having a lot of classes on teaching, because they want us to have some ability to teach before putting us in front of a classroom. Considerate, no? Today was also lab open-house day, where all the research groups were around and had food and were recruiting first-years. I went around to a few, and managed to spend some time at the ones I'm most interested in.

This evening, I was at a LAN party (multiplayer computer games at a friend's house) where I played Age of Empires. It was a lot of fun, though I'm no good at it. Maybe some other time I'll go again (it's apparently somewhat regular). Then again, maybe grad school will call instead.

The wedding this weekend was good, and pictures are nearly all up on Flickr. I got to spend a bunch of time with some great Carls, all of whom were at least a year (if not five) ahead of me. Hearing about life after Carleton was certainly an interesting experience. Of course, there was some dancing at said wedding. Surprisingly, though, it was mostly just the Carls involved, though we were certainly the minority of the probably 60-person crowd at the wedding. So the trip to Seattle was fun, I saw a new bird (pigeon guillemot), and generally had a good time.

A Few Firsts

Today has been the day for a couple of firsts for me. One was pictures being uploaded to Flickr from the new digs in Berkeley. This morning I couldn't fall back to sleep having woken up shortly before sunrise. So I got up, had breakfast, and took the camera up to the regional park to try to get good pictures---possibly even retaking the panorama with a longer lens. It was a little foggy this morning, as I gather it is every morning around here, and so the panorama was not very interesting. Even in direct sunshine things looked quite drab. I did take a few pictures anyway, and some of the mediocre+ pictures are now up on Flickr, as mentioned.

The other big first today was biking up the hill to my house from downtown. Although the department sits a good vertical distance below my house, it is by no means at the bottom of the hill. Downtown is significantly downhill of the chemistry department. As I am neither in particularly good shape nor adept at climbing hills on my bicycle, I was quite pleased to make it on the first try. I was under wheel power the whole way up, though I did have some issues in the last 50 meters. There's a fairly steep section of road right before I approach my house, and as I was pounding away, I needed to shift down. I reached for the shifter and missed, tried again, but it was too late. I lost all momentum and had to step down to avoid falling over. Naturally, I'm now standing in the steepest part of the road, and it's along a sharp, blind corner. Fortunately, there's relatively little traffic up here and they usually go somewhat slowly. I made sure the gear was switched, and then dragged myself, panting, up to the house. Once again, I had a hard time shifting when I was out of the saddle. I'm not sure whether that's because of the ergonomics involved, because I know that shifting while out of the saddle tends to throw me off balance especially at low speed, or both. But regardless, I made it all the way home in one piece on the first try.

I'll be gone this weekend for a brief vacation stint, and be back just in time for orientation on Monday. Also, all of my stuff (including the shiny new monitor) has safely arrived and has been unpacked. I think I'm pretty much set for school to start, and just in time.

Moved to California, Still No Gold. (Au, poor me)

I'm now a resident of California. This afternoon I went to the DMV (and it took all afternoon) and got a driver's license. Surprisingly, they even gave me my III suffix back, which I think Minnesota didn't have room for. Yay for getting my name right!

I'm pretty much established in the new digs, if digs you can call them. I'm on the third floor (aka attic) of a 100-year-old cedar-slat house up in the Berkeley hills. Campus is all of a mile or so away, and food is a little further in a somewhat different direction. The house is shared with three other grad students and the landlady. Occasionally we have dinner as a house, though typically it's fend-for-yourself. The house dinners are all-natural, organic, usually-vegetarian dinners, which is a bit of an adjustment for me. I've found that in California, unlike in Minnesota, the organic/all-natural stuff isn't really that different in price, and stores are very good about carrying it and labeling it properly.

As for meeting new people, I'm starting slowly. I have talked to the various people in my house, though interaction has been somewhat low. I've also spent some time with my friend Kestrel and joined her on a couple of occasions meeting up with other chemists for socializing. The Berkeley social dance club hasn't updated its calendar in a while, and I'm still on the fence about getting into it (they don't seem to have open club time, it's either lessons or competitive team).

I have not yet biked much around here. The other night I biked over to visit Kestrel, but because I went to movie night, I got a ride back home. There's also some interesting hiking to be done around here at a regional park further up the hill. Sunday morning I went up there for a few hours (it took nearly an hour to get up the hill, though I suspect I'll pare that down the next trip). The weather was pretty good, but warm in the sun. I took a few pictures, and attempted a panorama. Sadly, the pictures were mediocre at best, and due to the distortion of the lens at the wide angle I chose to use, the panorama didn't pan out. I'll try that again another time with a longer focal length.

Overall I feel pretty well moved in. All the boxes are here and (mostly) unpacked. Most of the administrative details have been attended to (certainly not all), and I'm starting to establish a bit of a routine. Speaking of which, it's bedtime.

Return from Canadia

I have recently returned from Canada, and there are pictures documenting said trip on Flickr. The weather was good, though because it has been very wet up there for quite some time, and just got warm, the bugs were fierce. My feet are still burning from the massive mastication that occurred.

In other news, I was poking around on the Creative Commons website, and found a link to a politician's apt use of their licensing: Sean Tevis is running for the Kansas legislature, and used this comic to spread the word about his opinions on the issues. He seems to know his stuff and how to get the message across. According to the Creative Commons website, he amassed over $90,000, well over the $26,000 he supposedly needed to be competitive.

Social dance is happening this Thursday evening at Carleton (email me if you need details), and I think I'll go. Although Bezerkeley has a ballroom dance club, and offers lessons, their website (wobsite?) doesn't say anything about dancing outside of competitive dance (too hardcore for me) and lessons (not really what I'm looking for). I guess I'll be finding out about that in a couple weeks. I head out on the 6th. Yikes.

Speaking of yikes, my senator Norm Coleman, in response to my letter expressing dissatisfaction with his vote for retroactive immunity for telcos and legalizing warrantless wiretapping, sent me an email full of lies. I don't have time at the moment to get into the details, but I think I'll publish excerpts (and link the full text) with comments when I get a chance. Just to throw this out now: vote the bum out! Vote Franken for Minnesota Senate. Failing to protect the constitution and lying to constituents are not desirable qualities in a senator.

Changes

A few things have happened in the past few weeks. I've been away from a steady internet connection where I can reach Gridley, so I haven't been able to post much. However, here's the rundown on what has been happening, with emphasis on the past week.

Following graduation, I had a trip out to Detroit for some family stuff. Upon my return I spent some time at home settling back in, relaxing, and learning LaTeX. I'm working on writing a tutorial geared at college students writing general college papers. That project has been frustrating me somewhat, so I've taken a bit of a break from it. I've also been reading a book by Galen Rowell called Mountain Light. It is a book on photography, and more specifically landscape photography in the mountains. Not only does it have the pictures themselves, but it has commentary both technical, artistic, and narrative on how the pictures were taken. Certainly an interesting read for anyone interested in photography.

More recently, I've been spending a few days with friends in Berkeley, looking for a place to live once I begin school. On this trip, there have been two major changes in my life. For one, I found a place to live, a little way into the hills above campus, but within walking/biking distance of school, food, and broader transit. I'm living in a spacious attic of an old house (early 1900s), with some view of the bay and the bridges. The house is shared with the landlady and three other students (at least two astrophysicists). It has a big kitchen with a nice stove and a dishwasher. So that should be good.

I have also begun bringing about the end of the world and have acquired a cell phone. I'm very disappointed to be supporting The Felonious Man, but there weren't really any alternatives.

Speaking of felons and telcos, the warrantless wiretapping and retroactive immunity bill was passed by the Senate yesterday, and is now to be signed into law. The roll call (broken down several ways) can be found here. Yeas are for lies, corruption, and retroactive immunity; nays are for Freedom, the Constitution, and the rule of law. Tell your senators what you think of their vote.

Finally Done!

Late last night I finished writing the research paper I needed to finish this week for my research adviser. The paper is written in LaTeX, which made it look really nice when it was all done (all with little effort on my end). As I was working along, I noticed that there were a bunch of places where I didn't have a non-breaking space and should have had one (80 mL, for instance, should not have a line-break on the space). Using a short regular expression and substitution, I was able to change all of that quickly in the vim text editor using the following command: :% s/\([0-9]\)\ \([mg]\)/\1\~\2/g The command looks at all the lines of the file for a number (and remembers it) followed by a space, followed by either an 'm' or a 'g', and remembers which of those it found. It then replaces that by the number, a non-breaking space, and the letter, continuing for all the occurrences on the line.

I continue my astonishment with the mainstream news media, for allowing things like this to happen with no additional comment. Take, for instance, these headlines from the BBC this morning:

Bush slams anti-US 'propaganda' US President George W Bush has denounced "misinformation and propaganda" which he says are sullying his country's image abroad.

US Guantanamo trials 'to proceed' A key ruling by the US Supreme Court on Guantanamo detainees will not affect military trials of enemy combatants, the attorney general has said. Michael Mukasey said he was disappointed with the court's decision to allow foreign suspects to challenge their detention in US civilian courts.

The first of these quotes is absolutely ridiculous given the second. Denying what the US once revered as an inaliable right (Habeus Corpus), having that reported very clearly, as stated by your Attorney General, comes off as a little... how should I put it... tyrannical. It is no surprise at all that anyone should hold the US in lower esteem for its increasing disregard for human rights. Of course, I suppose it is indeed misinformation and propaganda (WMDs, military analysts). Anyway, I have commencement rehearsal to get to (and packing), but you could imagine how this might get fleshed out.

Bubbly

Today I finished off my bubbler, the first of four final projects. The computational project is also nearing completion. I'm quite thankful that it is, as I have barely started the other two projects due Monday afternoon, and would like to have time to eat and sleep. Two more days, then time to relax. =D

Update

Yesterday was the Carleton triathlon. I didn't start due to the residual injuries/sickness from the past couple weeks. I was there to count laps and photograph, and some of those pictures are now up on Flickr (tagged triathlon). Wednesday was the last social dance (officially), which was an amazing night, though somewhat sad. I'll miss the group next year.

Wednesday was the last day of classes, and I even managed to get all the work that was due turned in before the deadline. The past couple days I've been working on extra-curricular work (paperwork for Berkeley, stuff for Stewardship, senior survey, etc.), but that should be done now, and I can get on to my four final projects. I have topics or a similar start for each, but there's still a long way to go. The projects are: making a bubbler (glassblowing), writing up all the research I have done at Carleton (research), writing a lab and the answers to it (computational chem), and making a neural network that predicts the temperature 24 hours out based on the Carleton weather database (computer science: artificial intelligence).

Squish

Yet another week has flown by, and once again, I'm behind on work. It's all due tomorrow, or not started and due Monday night. I have a feeling that much of the stuff due tomorrow is going to get "done" hastily, and may or may not be entirely complete. These past couple weeks have been among the worst in my time at Carleton, and I don't see it getting much better for this next one. Between stress, work, injuries, a cold, and an allergy to my extremely dry room, I've been pretty miserable. I'm not quite sure how my room manages to stay at very low humidity, when outside (windows open, fan blowing!) the dewpoint is nearly 60. In short, I'm stressed out, have been so for a while, and am likely to continue in this state for a couple weeks.

Weekend!

THis past weekend has been quite busy, though not with nearly enough work getting done. Thursday afternoon I played volleyball with the chemistry team, and managed to land on the top of my toes not the bottom. Suffice to say my foot wasn't very happy with that. Friday I had the foot looked at to make sure that it wasn't too badly damaged (or needing some sort of cast, etc.); to that end I had it x-rayed. Being the nerd that I am, as my foot was being x-rayed, I was wondering what sort of x-ray source was in the machine. Following that I went directly to the nordic ski barbeque.

At the ski barbeque, we had a lot of fun and discussed plans for next year. New officeres were elected, and I am almost out of all responsibility with the ski team. I still have a little documentation to do, but it's pretty much all done. After the SkiBQ had wrapped up, I headed out to Mai Fete (an island near the center of campus) to meet with the juggling club. Some of the Latin-American student organizations were holding an event there, and the juggling club was there juggling fire. I practiced with unlit clubs for a while, then when I felt better, I lit the torches and tried (rather unsuccessfully) to juggle them whilst on fire. My attempts were rather pathetic, but I did manage to get some pictures of other people juggling flaming balls on strings. They turned out rather nicely.

Because it was a nice night out, I ended up sleeping outside. When I woke, it was to the sound of a raucous softball game happening only a short distance away, as I had forgotten that it was Rotblatt weekend. Rotblatt is a Carleton tradition where an inning of softball is played for every year of the college's existence. These days the game is typically 5:30 AM - 5:30 PM. Another part of the game is that there's plenty of beer around in case anyone is playing too well. So waking to the sounds of that, I decided to go home.

The afternoon was spent talking to friends online, poking at some homework, and thinking about a new camera lens. Fairly quickly it was once again time for social dance, which was somewhat lightly attended, at least for the beginning. I had a good time, but was a little disappointed that I couldn't do more because of my foot (I ended up standing around for a bunch of the songs). Following social dance was dinner with other social dance people, then cleaning up before the Formal Dance.

For a couple years now, there have been a couple groups of social dance people (or former social dance people) who have occasionally organized a Formal Dance. They play a bunch of different music (some of it classic social dance stuff, some of it new), there's always good food to be had, and there are party games like Apples to Apples for people who want to be social but not dance. I was primarily involved either in dancing or in photography related to said dancing. I did manage a couple good pictures, which are on Flickr. This one was the clear choice for picture of the day, and has been submitted to the yearbook.

Sunday held yet more homework, but there was another chemists volleyball game at 3. Despite my injury, I decided to go: we've been having trouble fielding a full team (or even a functioning team of two), so if I go, the chances are we wouldn't have to forfeit. I brought the camera in hopes that enough people would show up that I could stay on the sidelines and take pictures. After about a game and a half, enough chemists had shown up that I was able to sub out finally (having been only somewhat effective) and take pictures. When the official games were over, both teams decided to keep playing with 6 to a side so everyone could play (and I could stand aside). Several of the people on each team were fairly good at volleyball, and so they occasionally would jumpserve. Though I ended up taking a lot of bad pictures, I did manage to get one good picture of a serve.

So that was the weekend. Today starts 9th week, and it's going to be a very work-ful week. On Thursday, Ronald Rivest is speaking on electronic voting security (he developed the algorithm behind secure online transactions such as webmail, online banking, and online shopping). Then on Friday it's the chemistry picnic, where the chemistry juniors perform the skit they've written which references all the seniors and faculty in the department. Past skits have included "The Wizard of Osmium", Harry Potter, and "Lord of the Benzene Rings". And now it's back to homework.

CS Final Project

Over the weekend, I was tasked with proposing a final project for my computer science class on Artificial Intelligence. Choosing a reasonably difficult project that is feasible is a bit of a delicate balance. I think I may find I didn't pick a good one, but it may be interesting all the same. My plan is to use the Carleton College Weather Database and a neural network to do temperature prediction for a time 24 hours in the future.

Birding

This morning was the Carleton bird count, which began at 6. On the count were about 12-15 people, many of whom were pretty serious birders (biology profs, arb people, etc.). On the count we saw a great variety of birds (66 species total), including a northern harrier, a wild turkey, lots of warblers, some sparrows, vireos, a bobolink, and a scarlet tanager. Fourteen species were added to my life list (though two should have been on it already). Seeing warblers, vireos, flycatchers, and sparrows with people who can identify birds by voice is amazing. I typically didn't see any bird clearly enough to identify it by sight. There may be picture up on flickr soon.

XKCD

I suppose it doesn't need my saying it, but xkcd was very good today.

Break from Computational

The last few days, I've been taking a break from computational (it'll eat me this week, don't worry). I've been managing to take a walk in the arb pretty much every day for the last few days, which has been good. Friday I even managed to go for a short run, though I noticed I'm rather out of shape, as well as perhaps a little under the weather. There's lots of room for improvement before the triathlon in about four weeks. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that computational chem will probably keep my training time pretty limited.

This weekend, in addition to running an NMR for my research (and training in my new minion!), I managed to upgrade my second computer. One nice thing about linux, and Ubuntu in particular, is that system maintenance is pretty easy. Just click a button to upgrade to the newest version, and it happens. Most of the software you would ever want is in one place, easily searchable, and automatically installed.

Admittedly, my upgrade experience wasn't quite that easy, but it would have been had I not been compiling things from source. I was reluctant to upgrade six months ago, as to do so would be to modify an otherwise-working computer during the middle of a term. However, the updates that come out for the system are typically security fixes only, not new features. With some of the programs, I wanted the new features, and to get it required compiling things myself. But when you compile things yourself, the system sees that you did so, and treats those programs with priority. Thus, when I upgraded the rest of the system, some things broke. I think I've rememdied most of that, but next time I'll certainly be doing a clean install.

It's been a while since I've mentioned politics here, so here's some interesting reading on the mainstream media and its military analysts.

Mid-term Break

The weather for midterm break has been gorgeous. Every day this weekend I've managed a several-hour walk in the arb, and did manage a couple pictures. That said, they're harder to come by than you might think, as the leaves are still not out much. Much of the arb is still pretty brown (with light green around the edges), and the bare branches don't make for very good (or interesting) pictures. I did manage to find some nice-looking trees, as well as some white flowers, which are both on Flickr. As usual, there were other things which were nice to look at but don't photograph well (partially obscured brown thrashers, various warblers, wrens, and flycatchers, among others).

Saturday night was the Spring Swing, where a band from the Cities comes down and plays swing music (with a small assortment of other music). The band was great, and it was nice to have live music, but the large number of people and large number of people who aren't familiar with social dance made it somewhat less enjoyable. Eventually one of the social dance leaders made an announcement about how people doing swing should tend toward the center, such that traveling couples can move around the perimeter (which grew smaller as more people came). In most dances, there wasn't really enough room to do anything interesting. One thing that was amusing was watching the gas laws in action (diffusion, increased collision rate and collison energy as pressure goes up and volume goes down). The tango demo and west-coast swing demo were also very good.

This weekend has become a little crazy for me, as I have a computational chem assignment due tomorrow (Tuesday) which I meant to start yesterday afternoon (Sunday). The computer cluster that we're running our calculations on (at Hope college) was down for most of yesterday afternoon and this morning, so I had no access to the computations I needed to run (or analyze). Tonight it's back online, so I'm underway, but later than I would have liked. Saturday a computer science assignment due at 11:55 that evening was a major source of stress (it needed to be done before Spring Swing), but I managed to get it done just before dinner.

As often happens, there are new pictures up on Flickr. If you haven't already done so, I would encourage you to use the RSS feed that my photo page has. To do so in Firefox, click the orange icon on the address bar when you're looking at my flickr page. In Firefox 2 you just have to click "subscribe now" after that, while in Firefox 3 you should choose RSS 2.0 and then "subscribe now". This will put a "live bookmark" into your bookmarks, which acts like a folder. Check the live bookmark periodically to see if there are new pictures up. Firefox 3 (beta 5) has the nice feature of having a link at the bottom of the live bookmark to open the website, lest there be several new items you want to see all at once, rather than one-by one. I've found that feature to be quite useful. Anyway, my computation has now finished, so I'm back to work.

Computations

Computational chemistry is eating me. I'm having a hard time figuring out what the lab report instructions mean and how to follow them. I understand, for the most part, what I'm doing, I just can't quite tell what the questions want me to do. And there's a lot that they want me to do. Beyond that, I'm being pulled in a bunch of other directions, including by my Artificial Intelligence class, my research, glassblowing, and just trying to have a little time to unwind. Midterm break is on Monday (our one day off each term), and yet the long weekend seems like nothing but a little more time to catch up on homework. Six weeks is both very far, and very near. I wish I had more time to enjoy it.

Oh, and the other day, I neglected to mention that on a walk in the arb shortly after sunset, I was walking through the prairie section of the lower arb. I had thought I had heard a woodcock on previous trips to the prairie, but wasn't sure. This time, however, there was no doubt. I heard the characteristic woodcock call, then watched as it spiraled upwards and into its courtship display. It was unmistakable.

If you haven't been keeping track, there are new pictures on Flickr.

Reversi

The last few days, I have been primarily occupied dealing with or thinking about a computer science assignment. Our task is to write an AI to play Reversi (sometimes known as Othello). The easier part of the code is getting the AI to figure out which moves to consider (not all of them), and we're given code for a functioning game, minus the part about which moves to consider. The second part of the assignment is to come up with a heuristic to evaluate the board position, and determine which moves are better than others. I, of course, decided I wanted to try some alternate strategies (i.e. play to limit the number of moves an opponent has). Unfortunately, that's hard to implement in the code setup we were given. I also tried some witchcraft to try to get it turn-independent, but that didn't turn out so well.

In theory, our programs should, if they're written well, be able to beat us pretty soundly. Having played quite a bit in high school, though, and learned strategies for it, I've managed to get fairly good myself. I'm no match for the various open-source AIs, though. Last night I managed to get mine to win against me, but it took a lot of convincing and the parity advantage (i.e. white player has an intrinsic advantage with the last move).

Yay Chemistry!

The last few days have been rather full of chemistry. I've had a couple of computational lab reports due this week (actually, one Tuesday, one Wednesday, and another Friday), and significant computational lab time (Monday 5-8 pm, Tuesday 1-5 pm). Yesterday afternoon was round 2 of glassblowing, where we learned how to create a test-tube bottom by closing off a glass tube, and to make a joint between the bottom of that tube and a smaller tube. As of this afternoon, I feel pretty comfortable with closing off the bottom well, but making joins is more problematic than I thought. Tomorrow I'll probably head back to the lab to practice more. Also this afternoon, I met with my research adviser about what experiments still need to be done, and where I should start with writing my exit paper.

In computer news, Ubuntu 8.04 came out today. Internet 2 and Bittorrent combined to get me copies of the cd images (I need both 32-bit and 64-bit versions) rather quickly, with up to 1 MB/s download rates (sustained). While in theory I could upgrade my system without re-imaging, I have messed things up enough (especially pictures and music) that re-imaging seems like the thing to do. This will probably be a terminal (no pun intended) upgrade for my laptop, as it's starting to show its age. With less than 512 MB of RAM, running Java, OpenOffice, GIMP, a music player, and Firefox at the same time is just not very speedy. After this upgrade, any further upgrade will likely be a self-compiled version to keep the bloat down. Also, I think this upgrade will see the appearance of drive-encryption or whole-disk encryption for the laptop. More research needs to be done on which system to use for that, and I'm considering changing filesystem types, too. I currently use ext3, but I'm open to trying something like XFS or ReiserFS.

On another computer front, I recently finished a working version of a program which takes as input a string (such as "research"), finds whether the word can be written in chemical elements, and either returns the chemical spelling or tells you that it's impossible. I still have some modifications to make to it before I release it generally (such as allowing Deuterium, disallowing repeats, etc.). There's also a bunch of code cleanup that I should do before anyone sees it.

Interrobang‽

In conjunction with its appearance on Flickr, I've decided to explain a little about the interrobang, a wonderful little punctuation mark that looks like this: ‽ It's a fusion of an interrogative mark (?) and an exclamation point, or a "bang" (!). Wikipedia is really the place to go for detailed info on that, though.

The interrobang has become a part of the chemistry department here at Carleton this year. As my comps group was putting together our presentation, we were trying to figure out if "hey guys, guess what" should be punctuated with "?", "!", "?!", or "!?" when one of the other majors (a chemistry/English double) pointed out that we should just use an interrobang, as that's what it's designed for. All three comps groups ended up having interrobangs in them, as a sort of inside joke. Also, when Clark Landis presented, he included a slide with an interrobang, which was highly entertaining.

Glassblowing!

Today was the first day of my glassblowing class. It's going to be a lot of fun. We covered how to use the torches safely, lab rules and such, and then got into actual work with glass. Our instructor, Marion, showed us first how to join a couple of small tubes of the same diameter together. Then, once that was done, she showed us how to make a T-tube, by blowing a hole in one tube and then affixing the other tube to that hole. After the demo, I tried my hand at the joining of two tubes. It took a little work, but after I figured out what the torch flame should look like, where in the flame to hold the glass, and now to react when it starts getting soft, it went a little better. In the end I managed to get the two pieces affixed to each other, though the seam was a little bumpy. I'll definitely be working on that more this week. I'm not sure this post is really getting across the message of how excited I am to be doing this. Glassblowing is something I've wanted to do for a really long time.

Over the last couple days, I've been getting out into the arb a little, so I have a few more pictures up on Flickr. Just use the "More" link under the photos on the left. Tonight is the last chemistry comps talk (at least of the groups), so that should be a fun time. The next couple days might be a little busy, but I should be back again sometime this weekend. Oh, and did I mention I'm still excited that I'm going to Berkeley in the fall?

A Couple More Things

Yesterday I forgot to mention a topic of considerable excitement: I'll be taking glass blowing this term, though not for credit. It's an independent study with one of the chem profs (my comps adviser). Supposedly the final project has historically been making a bubbler. I might also see about fixing some of the lab glassware that we have that needs to be fixed. Also, I've posted a few more pictures on flickr.

More on comps (not moron comps)

This past week, much of my free time has been devoted to comps. Tuesday evening, I spent a considerable amount of time coming up with questions to ask our comps speaker, Clark Landis of UW Madison. Wednesday was spent in classes, talking to the organic professor candidate, going to the seminar, and finalizing the questions to send Prof. Landis. Late that evening I managed to make time in my schedule to get to social dance, as I was getting to the point where working on homework wasn't going to be productive.

Thursday morning I furiosly did computer science work for Friday, including both a short written problem and some more complicated programming assignments. I managed to get all my code working well before noon, so I had a little time to prepare for Journal Club, where some of the chemistry majors discuss a paper related to the week's Friday seminar. Because Prof. Landis was speaking Friday, my comps group was expected to lead discussion of the paper.

Prof. Landis arrived shortly after journal club adjourned, and he, Marion (our comps adviser), and our group went to lunch in downtown Northfield. Following lunch, we went through an abbreviated version of our talk (it's his work, so he probably doesn't need the details explained in too much depth). Following that, we then got into some of the questions, discussing things from computational methods to backbonding and polymers. After a couple hours of discussion, we took a break for dinner at one of the local eateries. Thursday evening, we attended the Hartwig group's comps talk on catalyic asymmetric amination, which was a lot of fun. After the talk, there was much rejoicing and many of the senior chemists, Prof. Landis, and a couple of the Carleton profs went to Chemists at the Cow. Chemists at the Cow is a weekly event at the local pub where the chemistry majors (typically the seniors with a couple juniors) gather to have alcohol (R = H, Et) and socialize. Usual discussion topics include chirality and favorable/unfavorable interactions, grad school, stories from when some of our profs were at Carleton, and reminiscences of comps past.

Friday was another busy day. In the morning our group again met with Prof. Landis. After a somewhat lengthy discussion of the trans-effect, valence bond theory, sources of rhodium, and challenges of industrial catalysis, we came to our two final questions. Although the previous questions had all been on chemistry itself, especially on Landis' work, the last two questions were much broader, about chemistry, society, and societal perceptions of chemistry. Particularly the questions dealt with the reaction people have upon learning you ar a chemist: "I had chemistry once. I hated it. It's really hard." We then discussed at great length (probably for an hour and a half) what was the source of that sentiment and what could be done to make chemistry classes, especially at the introductory level, more engaging and less despised and difficult. One idea we came up with is that chemistry is a very graphics-oriented subject. It's hard to discuss chemistry without including graphics. New students and people not familiar with how to decode the graphics are not very likely to be able to understand what is going on, as the visual representation is crucial to understanding what is being communicated.

Eventually we ran out of discussion time on those questions, but it was a really thought-provoking and engaging discussion, the likes of which I have not had in a very long time, if ever. In my artificial intelligence class, I found out that the program I turned in Thursday (due Friday at 11:55 pm) had some errors in it, which would cause it to fail. After class, I managed to procure an extension, as I knew there were issues with my code, but time to fix it before midnight may be scarce. On my way from the math/computer science building to the chemistry building (no more than a tenth of a mile), I figured out what I had to do to my code, and it was a pretty minor adjustment. I made those changes, and managed to get it submitted without extension. Soon it was time for chemistry seminar.

Chemistry seminar was a lot of fun. Our group collectively introduced Prof. Landis and his talk. Having seen our presentation (to some degree) and the comps talk Thursday night, he managed to work in a few references to the talks, which was amazing. The comps talk the previous night had been on fairly similar research (developing catalyst for asymmetric organic synthesis), so I expect that the other comps group was following the talk fairly well and probably seeing a bunch of similarities. One great thing about the talk was that it was on some of the newer material which we didn't cover as a comps group because less had been published on it and it is less well understood.

Following the seminar, we headed down to Rochester for dinner at a steakhouse. While there we managed to continue some of the great philosophical discussion from the morning. Rather than being on chemistry specifically, it was on methods of teaching. For instance, is it more beneficial to have optional problem sets all term and then a big exam at the end? How much is feedback from grading helpful? How frequent should problem sets be? Once we had exhausted that line of thought, we moved on to a similar issue.

How should a college such as Carleton evaluate student writing in a manner such that students don't graduate without knowing how to write, but in a more equitable way than the current implementation. Evidence that the current system doesn't work was provided by Felix: his portfolio was reviewed and found to be exemplary, which necessitated a second review. The second review found that it needed work. I believe that ends up cancelling out to just being a normal pass. However, it shows just how subjective the grading for it is. My main complaint with it is that sciences in general don't have enough writing to really make the cut for the portfolio, so mine had been mostly papers from fields where I'm pretty weak, and it is likely that my strongest paper was in a field where my reviewer was weak. So I guess the audience is a crucial thing; the papers are written for a specific audience (typically the professor or one fairly familiar with the subject treated), but there may be only one reviewer for the three disparate papers. If I write a history paper, an English paper, and a chemistry paper going into depth on my research, it is unlikely that any one reviewer would be able to evaluate them in the capacity which each individual professor did to begin with.

So discussion of the writing portfolio and writing requirement took up the rest of dinner and much of the hour-long drive back to Carleton. Some of the suggestions I heard which I liked were the idea of having an op-ed style piece on something due at the end of the term for the first few terms, as well as having a single paper specifically for the purpose which you could get a little more invested in. I really enjoyed these discussions, and I think the whole group found them quite stimulating and thought-provoking.

Upon returning to campus, I dropped the rest of the group off (they were going to watch The Office) and put gas in the campus van and returned it to its parking spot. Having dropped off the keys, I was thinking of going to bed (it was about 11:30), but decided that if my group was celebrating being done with comps they weren't going to do it without me. I went over and joined them in watching a couple episodes of The Office, after which we decided to watch Transformers (I think a reference in the Hartwig comps talk about Optimus Prime was behind the choice). And so, I was out with my group until 3:15 or so, which was highly enjoyable.

Oh, and today I've posted some pictures from this week (mainly comps pictures) on Flickr.

Done With Comps!

I'm now through with comps (finishing up late Friday night), as well as post-comps comps-group bonding (for tonight... er... this morning). It's been an amazing time, and the last couple weeks have been a lot of fun. More on that after I get some sleep.

Comps

Clark Landis is here from UW Madison. We're having a great time talking to him. It's definitely a great part of this experience. In a few moments, we'll be heading out to dinner, but I thought I'd get in a quick update. Things here have been hectic trying to keep everything under control with my other classes so that this visit can happen. Deep thought: In 30 hours (11:59 or so Friday night), I'll be a post-comps spring-term senior.

It is decided!

Next fall I will be attending the University of California at Berkeley. The forms are all signed and submitted, with the exception of my final transcript and proof of graduation. Comps should be done within a week.In the mean time, I will be dealing with my non-comps classes and continuing to take pictures. I added yesterday's picture to flickr. So that's the news around here.

Life After Comps Presentation

One thing I neglected to mention yesterday is that the presentation is really only the first half of the comps scariness. The other half is next week, when Clark Landis, the professor whose work we've been studying, comes to Carleton. As a group, we'll talk to him about his research for several hours, and go out to dinner a couple times. By this time next week, though, I should be done.

Also somewhat noteworthy, I've begun putting my pictures of the term onto Flickr, where I have them in an album in chronological order. I'd like to be updating it every week or so (probably a Saturday morning thing), but I'm not sure if that will happen. Some of the days may not have very good pictures. I do what I can, but some days are better than others.

Comps presentation done!

Today the Landis Group and I presented our talk on asymmetric hydrogenation, and Landis' work on determining the mechanism of rhodium-catalyzed hydrogenation. The talk went quite well, and I'd like to thank everyone who supported me in the experience, including those of you who came to the talk, those who wanted to be there but couldn't be, and Megan, who, though she fits in the latter category (I think), sent flowers to get me through the last few hours of preparation. In case you missed the talk, some of our graphics are available here, here and here (Java required for all three; it's a page I'm hosting, so its uptime is about like mine).

Aaaah! Comps!

My comps presentation is tomorrow at 3:30 in Olin 141 (nearest Goodsell). It seems to be coming together, though we certainly have stuff to do tonight and tomorrow. My part is solidifying well. This morning I took a break for a while to go on a photography/birding expedition in the arb. I saw a pair of egrets, swarms of robins, juncos, sparrows, and chickadees, some cardinals, some mallards, a hawk (too high to tell what kind), a great blue heron, a few bufflehead, and some dark non-mallard ducks. On my way back, I stopped at the post office, and found that I had a huge bouquet of flowers waiting for me from Megan (I'm pretty sure that's pyrite Megan, but there's some uncertainty). The flowers are amazing, and when I got to Periodic Table (the chemistry lunch) after picking them up, some of the people commented that they worked at the post office and had seen I had a huge thing of flowers. So Megan, thank you and well done! It really made my day.

Coming Attractions

I have begun testing of two software packages for blogging, as I intend to use real software after graduation. They are Drupal (from drupal.org) and WordPress (from wordpress.org). Please feel free to poke around on them and comment and press buttons. Features currently known not to be working include the login page on Drupal and anything that involves the site sending email. There is a poll on Drupal if you want to express your opinion that way.