Odds and Ends

I have to make more posts more frequently, this was, afterall, supposed to be a supplement to my memory. This is a post of disjointed thoughts.

Perceptions

My friend Groves and I were talking about how we consider time. For instance, a year seems like a long time. So when you say or think, “I have been on this Earth for 30 years.” it seems like a really long time. However, when you think in terms of something that seems short and fleeting, like summer, it is a different story, “I have been on this Earth for 30 summers”. You might exclaim, “Thirty summers, damn! I better get out and enjoy this summer!” She was coming at it from the point of view of farming. Since you only have one growing season a year in the NE, it takes forever to get experience and try new things. I was coming at it from the point of view of illusions, but I have since forgotten my line of thought… sigh.

A Slippery Slope

Socializing is a super slippery slope. One week you are a miser living in your cave day after day, night after night, then you go out because a bunch of astronomers are visiting your city and you want to show them a good time. That leads to more of the same with others. Then again, and again, and again.

Next thing you know, you are hosting veggie potlucks, going to italian dinners, graduate student movie nights, poker games, bars, more potlucks, etc., etc.. You play beer pong, BEER PONG for crying out loud. It starts to seem like every night you have something to do. With nary a moment to sit, relax, and think of some ideas for blog posts. Life becomes a quick succession of events, like they say you witness in the moments before your death. But you are not dying.

Perhaps it was my previous lifestyle that gives me this odd perspective on my current lifestyle. The previous lifestyle of a few months ago, when days seemed to meld into each other with no distinct beginning or end. Like some mobius strip that I traverse in a week only to begin anew. And yet, it is in this mobius strip that life seemed more conducive to wonderful bouts of creativity, clarity, and calm.

That all seems to be gone, for now. Goals have to be set proactively otherwise they won’t be met. This is where I find myself now, on the verge of an evening with friends, in the middle of this blog post, deciding whether to finish, save for later, or just go with it. I can’t even finish blog posts, so I guess that means I am going with it.

This Go-to Guy

Today, at 12:45 PM, I got up from my desk to get a cup of coffee. I returned in time to catch the lunch talk at 1PM. I sat among my colleagues, smiled, said hello. And in turn three of them asked me, “Did you get my email?” Apparently, in the span of fifteen minutes, while I went for the coffee, four emails arrived in my inbox. Each was an independent request for help. Each had a distinct topic. It felt good to be in such demand, never mind the fact that two requests were from postdocs.

Some of their problems are easy for me to solve, others are more difficult. I prefer helping with the difficult problems. They are interesting and I like these small tasks that I can jump into, solve, and forget about. By the end of the day, I had solved all their problems, finally having a chance to start working on my own. It is interesting being the go-to guy, but it is also a little debilitating.

Maybe I am a sucker?

Stereographic Camera Spotting

Today, during lunch, a guy walked in with a stereographic camera slung over his arm. It was built from two 35mm film cameras cut and welded together. Each lens was tied to the other, so focus occurred simultaneously, as were the f-stop controls. I would love to have such a device! He said it was made by some fellow in Russia. I can’t find it online.

The Wind

On a walk–I seem to start many a post with “On a walk…” don’t I?

On a early evening post big italian dinner walk, when my protruding belly and I grew tired, we stopped at the local elementary school’s baseball field and laid upon the wooden bleachers below the cooling, star-filled, city sky. The occasional breeze gently buffeted my outstretched body.

The breeze, or any wind for that matter, is an odd phenomenon, rooted firmly in physics and , particularly, hydrodynamics, with the air playing the role of the liquid (hydro-), a role which during these past humid nights is not far from reality. I wondered if all the analogs we study in hydrodynamic simulations exist in the breeze that passed over me? RT instabilities, turbulence, wakes, shocks? Was my outstretched body leaving a wake? Were the tingling sensations on my arm hairs bouts of micro turbulence? Unanswered questions I’ll let steep before attempting to find out.

I thought further about the breeze; it’s origin, it’s path before now, it’s path after. I imagined the wind as an entity traveling across town, nay the continent. Encountering, along the way, particles and molecules that once were part of a distinct fragrance or micro-atmosphere but now struggle to recall their identity as they mingle and mix with similarly swept-up particles all succumbing to the relentless assimilation that is the wind.

Its a metaphorical microcosm, it is.

Introducing Notebooks

I love notebooks. I have tons. Many go unused because I simply spend too much time on the computer. I have spent a amount considerable of time in the recent months rectifying this situation with added sessions of drawing and physical journaling, that’s why my posts have been so infrequent, not to mention, providing the impetus for my Eyebrow story.

So you might ask what would possess me to develop my own personal notebooking software for my computer from scratch–a software I affectionately call Notebooks–when there are already tons out there (i.e. WordPress)?

Two parts: first, I find the WordPress interface is too clunky, too many distractions, essentially, it is written for someone 2.0, whereas I am 1.0, meaning, HTML/CSS/Javascript/PHP/MySQL are all second languages to my fingers. I don’t need to be babied; I need a fine tailor. Whom other than I to tailor to me?

Second, I am getting a new computer, and so I expect I will be on it a lot in the coming months as I pound out publications and my thesis, and I’ve needed a better method of journaling for some time now because, let’s face it, my brain is imperfect, worse, my memory terrible, so these electronic notebooks will serve the purpose of cataloging thoughts, providing prompt access, and a general supplement for my brain.

Fig 1.: home page for Notebooks, each colored block links to a separate notebook, these are my current four topics of interest and frequent journaling.

Fig 2. the science notebook, most updated so far.

Fig 3. an entry expanded, note the redacted information.

I told my friend about how I spent all day yesterday developing Notebooks instead of working, she joked, “You are going to blog about this aren’t you?” which I said I wasn’t, but after spending the beginning of today using it, I was super stoked and had to share.

It isn’t available for your use, nor can you see it in action unless you are looking over my shoulder, but it is dead simple and you can probably implement it in your favorite programming languages.

I plan to add a timeline feature, that will hopefully keep me on target for the major deadlines on the horizon. Think: Dignan’s Notebook from Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket.

Those GAP Pants From Toronto 2003-2009

Yesterday, while riding about town on my biciclette, my favorite pair pants broke. These were brown Gap pants, my first pair of straight leg, regular fit, five pocket style pants, which I purchased from a clearance rack at the Gap in Toronto many moons ago for 5 Canadian dollars, that’s back when the US dollar meant something in CA, so these pants were about 3 USD, and to me, they quickly became priceless.

These pants were also the only item of clothing in my entire wardrobe, shoes included, which had leather (the manufacter’s label was leather). In fact, aside from a small leather-bound bible gifted to me by a dear friend, these pants were the only possession of mine with leather! They were that awesome.

So yesterday, I felt a growing discomfort on my inner thigh on my bike ride. It wasn’t until I got home that I could see it was from the steady wearing away of my skin by the friction from my exposed thigh rubbing against my biciclette’s seat, exposure caused by the sudden disintegration of the crotch of my brown Gap pants. It should not have come as such a surprise, I had seen the treadbare crotch before and even took special care, keeping my pants out of the wash to prolong their life, even wearing them in the bath to gently clean them with my loving hand, and yet, I did not question my actions when I slapped them on for my long evening bike ride. Denial can trump the most astute mannerism. Sigh.

I will try to mend them, maybe even put in a patch of some sort, but I know it will never be the same, and it will feel like the stuffing of a beloved pet…fitting that these pants should be partially composed of the slightest bit of animal skin.

Ooh, the crows are cawing wildly, must be going to roost, I think I’ll join them.

Demure Flirtation

If you aren’t listening to the group I’m from Barcelona, which, incidentally, is not from Spain but from Sweden, what are you waiting for?

Where else can you listen to poppy, catchy hooks like “I don’t want to wear glasses.”, a song about losing ones keen eyesight and the pitfalls associated with it’s denial when walking in the woods, seriously people, “gla-sses”.

Furthermore, on a soon to be released compilation by me entitled “Don’t Mention It, It Was The Least I Could Do”, there are two songs from this supergroup.

“Damn, oversleeping again” from a song about oversleeping… are you on YouTube searching for them yet? Sweden, did I mention they are from Sweden?

Oh my gosh, they are speaking Swedish in between tracks, that’s so cute.

The compilation looks like this:

It was made for a girl that I demurely flirt with–yes, demure flirtation is possible, and I am a champ at it–but I decided it was a compilation worthy of a wide release after giving her some alone time with it.

“I have built a tree house, nobody can see us, coz it’s a me and you house.”

I heard a fairly well known ROC poet read yesterday, he was a filling in for another poet who bailed last minute on a reading at Greenwood Books. He read this great poem about trees falling in the woods. There were molecules acting erratically because they thought no one was there to see them transmitting the sound of the falling tree–I am not doing justice to his poem–but it was a delicious and hilarious poem.

At one point, the poet received a phone call on his cell phone. Naturally, he answered. The one-sided conversation went something like this:

Hello?

Yeah.

Oh you do!

Listen… can I pick it up later.

Thanks.

I thought to myself, as he apologized for the interruption, if I was at a Buffalo Sugar City reading, that might have been a poem.

Ah, I can smell the rain.