Thinking out Loud

A Few Choice Verses.

2008-05-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

I just felt like sharing a few of my favorite Bible verses, specifically those that I see as being related to my profession.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
-- Psalms 19:1-4 (NIV)

What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
-- Romans 1:19-20 (NIV)

The universe that God has created is a reflection of his glory. Although many people nowadays see science as the opponent of God and religion, I see science as a form of worship. I study this world, and this solar system, and this galaxy and this universe that God has created, because it reminds my day-by-day of the awesome power and majesty of our Creator, and by studying it, I am in essence studying God.

Not all Blocks are Frictionless, nor Springs Massless

2008-04-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

I recently was in a situation where I realized my theoretical physics knowledge was subtly working against me, in a real-world situation.

Let me begin by saying I've been having really bad luck with tires recently. Maybe it's because I drive about 2 hours each weekend to visit my fiance, and it adds an unusual amount of wear and tear on my tires, I don't know. What I do know is that in the past year or two, I've been forced to replace a tire 4-5 times. It was only a few weeks ago, when I got a flat and had to replace the most recent 2 tires that it was apparent enough for the particular repair place I was near to tell me this is NOT due to running over something on the road, etc. In short, the tire was just destroyed from the inside out, probably due to improper pressure in the tires. I had been driving on under-inflated tires, probably for quite some time.

Under-inflated? I didn't get it. Aren't tires air-tight? Where would the air go, if it's a closed system. Now, I'm the first to admit I'm a car idiot. My mechanic knowledge goes about as far as adding oil, adding gas, and replacing a flat tire with a spare (I've gotten REALLY good at that part in recent years, in fact). So when I asked the mechanic how often I should be checking the pressure of my tires, myself, he suggested once a month.

Once a month. So slightly more often than "check the pressure, how do you do that?"

Needless to say, I bought a pressure reader display thingy and as soon as I got home from the mechanic, I checked the pressure on my tires. The two they replaced were exactly what the label on the tire said it should be, 44 PSI. One of the back tires was at 35 PSI. The other back tire was at something like 22 PSI, nearly HALF deflated. I very promptly went to the nearest gas station and filled them with air to the correct pressure.

So apparently, tires are not a PERFECT, ideal system. Air can, in fact, leak out over time, so that a perfect 44 PSI tire today might not stay that way indefinitely.

Welcome to the world of masses with friction, springs with mass, and objects that are not perfect spheres. It's a scary place.

Two More Papers Brings the Total to 3.

2008-04-24T12:52:00.001-07:00

It's been several months since my last post, but I assure you, my non-existent reader(s), that I am still alive and kicking. My girlfriend of several years is now my fiance. We've had the promise dinner thingy, and our families have met, and it all went very well. We are planning to get married after we get our respective degrees, sometime in summer '09. I'm still doing research at UCI steady as always. And in two weeks, I'm heading back to a family vacation in Yosemite which should be fun.

Speaking of research, in the past month or so, I've had two more papers come out onto astro-ph, the online journal cite that pretty much the entire astronomy community posts to.

Berrier et al 2008 (papers with > 3 authors are generally referred to by the first author's name "et al" and the year) can be found here. I'm the 2nd author on this paper, and it's been a long time coming. The 1-sentence summary is that galaxies residing today in big clusters of galaxies tend to fall in to the cluster alone, not in small groups of a few galaxies at a time.

Cooke et al 2008 can be found here. I'm 4th author on this one, because mostly I just provided some theoretical comparison that the first author used in 1-2 paragraphs of the paper. This paper has actually gotten a bit of more mainstream media attention, because the main result can be "packaged" in a layman-friendly way. In this paper, we discovered a cluster of galaxies in a very early part of its formation, roughly 11.4 billion light years away, which is the farthest away scientists have ever discovered a merging group of galaxies (instead of just a single bright galaxy. It's very hard to distinguish a source into components so far away.) A press release from sciencedaily.com can be found here.

Does it seem somewhat depressing that after 4 months of no posts, this is all the news I really have? I suppose some might consider my life boring, but I like it. It's not so much boring as it is... consistent. Now if I had a "McJob" that required me to stand around and do nothing all day, THAT would be boring, but my life involves a lot of brainpower. Unless I'm watching TV or something. Because sometimes you gotta give your brain a break now and then.

The Golden Compass

2007-12-06T00:42:00.000-08:00

I'm choosing to boycott the new movie "The Golden Compass" despite the fact that it looks quite entertaining and well-made (based on previews) and despite the fact that I love the fantasy genre in all shapes and forms (TV, movie, book, video game, etc).

Before I go into the details of why I'm choosing to boycott this movie, here is an email that has been going around on the subject:

[Collected via e-mail, October 2007]

There will be a new Children's movie out in December called THE GOLDEN COMPASS. It is written by Phillip Pullman, a proud atheist who belongs to secular humanist societies. He hates C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and has written a trilogy to show the other side. The movie has been dumbed down to fool kids and their parents in the hope that they will buy his trilogy where in the end the children kill God and everyone can do as they please. Nicole Kidman stars in the movie so it will probably be advertised a lot. This is just a friendly warning that you sure won't hear on the regular TV.

[Collected via e-mail, October 2007]

I don't just generally dismiss a movie or book just because someone 'says' it's meant to be something else...but this is worth knowing if you plan to see it (or plan to take your kids).

"Hi! I just wanted to inform you what I just learned about a movie that is coming out December 7, during the Christmas season, which is entitled THE GOLDEN COMPASS. It stars Nicole Kidman and it is directed toward children. What is disturbing to me is that this movie is based on the first of a trilogy of books for children called HIS DARK MATERIALS written by Philip Pullman of England.

He's an atheist and his objective is to bash Christianity and promote atheism. I heard that he has made remarks that he wants to kill God in the minds of children, and that's what his books are all about. He despises C.S. Lewis and Narnia, etc. An article written about him said "this is the most dangerous author in Britain" and that Pullman would be the writer "the atheists would be praying for, if atheists prayed." Pullman said he doesn't think it is possible that there is a God and he has great difficulty understanding the words "spiritual" and "spirituality." What I thought was important to communicate is what part of the agenda is for making this picture. This movie is a watered down version of the first book, which is the least offensive of the three books. The second book of the trilogy is THE SUBTLE KNIFE and the third book is THE AMBER SPYGLASS. Each book gets worse and worse regarding Pullman's hatred of God. In the trilogy, a young girl becomes enmeshed in an epic struggle against a nefarious Church known as the Magisterium. Another character, an ex-nun, describes Christianity as "a very powerful and convincing mistake." As I understand it, in the last book, a boy and girl are depicted representing Adam and Eve and they kill God, who at times is called YAHWEH (which is definitely not Allah). Since the movie would seem mild if you viewed it, that's been done on purpose.

They are hoping that unsuspecting parents will take their children to See the movie, that they will enjoy the movie and then the children will want the books for Christmas. That's the hook. Pullman says he wants the children to read the books and decide against God and the kingdom of heaven.

If you decide that you do not want to support something like this, I suggest that you boycott the movie and the books. I googled a synopsis of THE GOLDEN COMPASS. As I skimmed it, I couldn't believe that in a children's book part of the story is about castration and female circumcision.

----------------------------------------------------

I want to preface the rest of this post by saying I have not read any of the books in question. I have, however, had online discussions in a writer's forum with those who have read the books. The generalizations I will make about the trilogy's plot are based on 2nd hand knowledge -- based on the descriptions given by people who have, indeed, read the trilogy.

We live in a free country, and a writer has the right to detail any kind of story he wants. The fact that this series of books deals with a church very obviously resembling the Christian church is perfectly acceptable. The fact that the heroes of the story are setting out to destroy/dethrone this establishment is also perfectly acceptable. This is the author's world. The allusions to actual figures in history, or actual religions is his prerogative, although I personally prefer fantasy religions to be, more or less, fabrications, so that I can be assured the author isn't using his novel to try to "preach at me" one way or another.

One of the things that disturbs me, though, is that later on in the series, in book 2 or 3, the main characters are no longer battling corrupt officials of the world's religion (and, indeed, there are apparently "parallel worlds" in this series, so that at least one of them is fully intended to be our own world, and not a fantasy one, or so I've been informed). No, eventually, the true villain behind it all turns out to be God himself, and God's angels. Essentially the series portrays God, the creator of the various parallel worlds, as a being who essentially just likes to order people around and make them miserable, and it is up to the heroes of the story to stop this God so that people be free to do whatever they want.

Nevertheless, this is still a fictional world. So far, nothing I have said would make me bother posting about this series as I have done. Nothing so far would make me forward a chain email (I hate most chain emails). Even the fact that each of the three books gets progressively more blatant in its anti-Christianity theme wouldn't be enough to get me "riled up" as I am--"hooking" readers with a fantastic story with book 1, then slowly building the anti-religion theme and introducing God as the main villain later. But until now I haven't mentioned that the main heroes of this story are children. Indeed, the books are intended as a fantasy series for children, much like the Chronicles of Narnia.

But wait, you might say. I'm not allowed to go on some kind of "protect our children from outside influences" speech without disavowing the Chronicles of Narnia as well. After all, some atheists out there might be horrified if their children read the Narnia books and begin to believe in God--just like some Christians will be mortified if their children read this book series and cast aside their religious beliefs as a result, adopting an anti-religious skepticism. (I haven't read the Narnia books either, actually, so I'm only presuming that the Christian religious overtones are very strong in them, as I've been told as much.)

But even if the Narnia books heavily encouraged religious thought and Christian morals in particular, it didn't set out to bash any other beliefs. These books seem to be all about how organized religion--and Christianity in particular--is evil, oppressive, and all just a big sham. That's not the same as a fantasy series promoting atheism, or any other world-view. Besides, in the end, this IS a free country, and if I don't like the morals this series is trying to teach, even if that standpoint is completely valid, then I have the freedom to boycott this movie, and put my money where my heart is. Anyone opposed to the Narnia series can boycott those movies as well.

----------------------------------------------------

Pullman, the author denies that anti-Christianity in general was his intention, nor that "pro-atheism" was his intention. In his own words:
"My point is that religion is at its best — it does most good — when it is farthest away from political power, and that when it gets hold of the power to (for example) send armies to war or to condemn people to death, or to rule every aspect of our lives, it rapidly goes bad. Sometimes people think that if something is done in the name of faith or religion, it must be good. Unfortunately, that isn’t true; some things done in the name of religion are very bad. That was what I was trying to describe in my story."

Now what he actually says here is something I full-heartedly agree with. Blind faith--to the point of following religious "orders" that contradict the very NATURE of your religion, is bad. If the pope ordered all Catholics to murder all non-Christians, no one should obey him: it goes against the foundation of love, acceptance, and forgiveness taught by Christ, Himself. And if these are the true morals of the series, I would be tempted to read them, and probably even support them... if they weren't aimed at children.

Children, up to a certain age, tend to see the world in black and white. People are good or bad. Actions are good or bad. And these novels, when reduced to black and white, have the very clear message "religion is bad" and more specifically "Christianity is bad." If this were a series aimed at adults, I would applaud the moral ambiguity and complexity, because (IF done well, and even-handedly) it makes any imaginary world seem more real. But aiming this movie at children seems like a low blow, almost like the goal is to secretly indoctrinate children with an clear anti-religious mentality.

In short, since I haven't read the series, I can't honestly say "this is pure evil Christian-bashing." I can't even say for certain what morals are taught by the books. I haven't read them. In the end, my aim isn't even to "create a gathering" to boycott the movie with me, in attempt to oppose it. I just aim to inform those who didn't know better.

So in closing, if you were like me before I saw this chain email, and you just thought "The Golden Compass" was no different than any other fantasy movie out there, I only ask that you go in with your eyes open--especially if you take a child to see it, and most especially if that child would then want to read the books. Some children wouldn't be affected no matter what some silly fantasy books said. I know I was like that, even as a child--I would have found the "let's kill God, cuz he's evil" plot premise outright goofy. But some children are easily swayed. So think twice before you get your child excited about this seemingly harmless fantasy series.

Stewart et. al. 2007

2007-12-04T15:18:00.001-08:00

My first major paper in my career in astrophysics has now been made public to the scientific community, and submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for consideration. It is the first paper to appear in the community with my name attached as an author, but even more important, it is also my first FIRST author paper. That means this paper is essentially "mine" insomuch as any paper with mulitple authors can belong to a single author.

I believe it also represents a very interesting and important topic of research, regarding our current understanding of galaxy formation in a LCDM universe (current best-guess of nature of the universe).

The abstract, and links to a free pdf download of the paper, can be found here.

This paper began as a short 3-4 page "letter" paper, sometime in March-April earlier this year, so this has been a long time coming, and it feels great to finally have it out there!

NaNoWriMo (kinda)

2007-12-04T15:07:00.000-08:00

So for the second year in a row I've participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which takes place every November. Essentially, it ia an honor-based, just-for-fun "contest" in which anyone who wants to can create an account and attempt to write a 50,000 word novel (kinda short though, so more like a novelette) in a single month, spanning from 12:00:01 AM November 1st through 11:59:59 November 30th.

Last year, I took the opportunity to get down 60% or so of a rough draft of a fantasy novel. Or should I say, a fantasy sequel, as it is, indeed, a sequel to the fantasy novel I've been tinkering with since high school (and which I've finished, to the extent that I'm now searching for literary agents / publishers / etc in attempt to publish it.)

This year, because I wasn't quite ready to put this task aside and work on another completely new project (and becasue NaNo snuck up on me this year, and I wasn't nearly prepared enough to do it again on a completely new topic) I decided to create my own personal "version" of NaNo. The entire "contest" is just a meaningless fun motivator to get lots of writing done, so I decided that going through my completed rough draft from last year (and I mean VERY rough, even for a first draft) I could reasonably consider every 2 words rewritten as 1 word written anew. In short, I proposed to turn last year's novel into a completely updated 2nd draft (spanning ~100,000 words intead of 50,000).

It's really amazing what you can get done in your spare time when you have a hard deadline to finish. I actually managed to do it. Looking back at the two years, I honestly can't say which is more challenging -- writing 50k words of a rough draft of a novel, when you don't care whatsoever if the words make any sense, so long as you get SOMEthing down on paper -- or REwriting 50k words, refusing to move past any segemnt in the novel until it meets the satisfaction of a relatively clean draft. I was going to rewriting my quantity into quality this time. While I'm sure I'll want to go through and make 3rd, 4th, etc drafts in the future, it was very fun and refreshing to make this much progress in a single month.

Monkey Puppet singing Michael Jackson

2007-12-04T15:03:00.001-08:00

Tania introduced me to this video (taken from the talent show "Britain's Got Talent) that is absolutely hilarious. The contestant's name is Damon Scott, and he made it into the finals, though he ultimately lost to Paul Potts, an incredibly talented opera singer (he's on youtube too). I have nothing to really say about it, other than wanting to share it with the world, becasue it puts a smile (usually accompanied with a laugh) on my face every time I see it.

Dumbledore is Gay?

2007-10-21T01:28:00.000-07:00

According to J.K. Rowling, Dumbledore is apparently gay. I'm not sure why recent information, added after the fact by J.K. Rowling at a press conference-type event, annoys me, but to some degree it does. Maybe I'm just a raving homophobe (I don't consider myself to be one) but this new information just doesn't seem to fit with all the information about Dumbledore we received in the now-completed series. It's as if Rowling just wanted to add in some juicy controversial background info after the fact, just for kicks, even if it wasn't background character material that was in her head from the beginning.

In any case, If J.K.Rowling's version of Dumbledore is gay, that's perfectly fine. The Dumbledore in my head isn't, because one of the wonderful thing about novels is that each reader brings something into it, and half-creates the world in their head alongside the author. The physical picture in my head of Harry and Ron and Hermionie and all the other characters may be quite different from the one in yours (well, until the movies came out, at which point we all probably saw the characters in our minds begin to resemble the corresponding actors... but that's another point entirely), because all descriptive information and essentially everything in a novel is interpreted differently with each person that absorbs it.

Many times, as I read about "extra material" authors put in about characters after the fact, in fact I would say most of the times that happens, I don't care. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say I don't care... that much. I build the characters and events in my mind as I read along. And if I mispronounce a character's name for an entire series, well, in my mind that now IS the character's name. If an author tells me after the fact that a character was abused as a child, or once had a pet dog named spot, or is homosexual, and that information just doesn't seem to jive with the character I've created in my mind, then frankly, I disregard it. On the other hand, if that added information makes me think to myself "wow this explains why character X does Y and Z all the time! It all makes sense..." then I do incorporate that information into my personal fictional world. Still, if it was vital to the plot, that info would be in the book. The fact that it's not, means that it wasn't, so I'm going to continue right along with the character I have in my mind.

Sometimes I'll even go farther than that. I recall when the last Star Trek: Next Gen. movie came out, I personally thought that the film reeked of "fanfic" type plotlines, and (SPOILER ALERT if you care but somehow haven't seen this movie, Star Trek: Nemesis, then don't read the rest of this paragraph!!!) when Data died at the end of it, I was sufficiently fed up with the plot of the movie, and I decided that this movie "didn't happen." In the Star Trek universe in my head, Data is alive. But that's an extreme, when compared to having a heterosexual Dumbledore in my personal Harry Potter universe, instead of homosexual.

For that matter, I don't really have a heterosexual Dumbledore in my head. I have essentially an asexual Dumbledore in my head. One who was so overwhelmed with the problems of the world on his shoulders from a relatively early age that he went without love or physical intimacy for his entire life. A kind of celibate monk-wizard type figure. Kinda like my vision of Gandalf. But that's my Dumbledore. Some people may have had a homosexual Dumbledore in their heads before Rowling even said anything. Some will change their Dumbledore after hearing this announcement, bowing to the will of the author. And some, like me, don't really care what the author wants to throw into the series, after the fact. What's done is done, and the image of my Dumbledore stopped evolving with the last book. She can say Dumbledore was actually a frog-turned-wizard by some magic spell for all I care, it's not going to affect the world in MY head unless I so choose.

Officially Advanced

2007-10-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

Something like 6 months ago, my advisor told me I'm ready to advance to Ph.D. candidacy, and I could finish doing it in a week or two, and hopefully we could get it out of the way by the end of the (spring '07) quarter.

Two weeks back I finally asked him when we're going to get around to organizing my advancement to candidacy. In two day's time it was organized and the date was set. Yesterday, I got to stand before a room of 5 professors and give an hour long powerpoint presentation demonstrating a knowledge of the entire field of cosmology, as we know it today, and what I have been researching, in particular, and how this research fits in to the current model, and what I should be focusing on in the future.

I knew I would be fine. I mean, sure I made some mistakes, and felt a little like a deer staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck, but I managed to gather myself together after James would come to my aid with a helpful question to get me pointed in the right direction. Mostly it was the anticipation that was killing me. I was probably more nervous about giving the talk about an hour beforehand than when I was giving the presentation, itself.

But not it's over. I am officially (well... the paperwork is still making its way through the UC system, so more like essentially than officially) advanced to Ph.D. candidacy. What does this mean you might ask? Well, it means that I have taken essentially the only real stepping stone between the qualifying examination and my final Ph.D. thesis defense. One might say it signifies me reaching the "halfway point" between the quals, where essentially you finish classes and begin research, and receiving my Ph.D, where my research at UCI is complete and I go out into the world in search of post-docs.

In short, it's a sort of rite of passage (though nothing nearly so severe as the quals) that I've completed. And it feels pretty good to have done so. Now if those two papers I'm first and second author on, respectively, would just get published already. The research has been essentially done and we've been tinkering with perfecting them for about 6 months now as well.
One day, there will come a time when someone will ask me "so how's that paper you keep talking about going?" and I'll be able to respond with something other than "it's basically done. Any week now, we'll send it out."

San Diego Comic-Con 2007

2007-07-31T00:26:00.000-07:00

This last week, from Wednesday to Sunday, was the 3rd--and most probably the final--of my visits to Comic-Con in San Diego. I'm the sort to embrace my nerdiness, and there are plenty of interesting, and quite nerdy attractions at Comicon, but in the end, I just didn't feel like it was worth it.

In order to get into the popular panels (for example, the Heroes panel, in which all of the main cast of the TV show Heroes were present) it was necessary to wait in line for 2 full hours, longer than the length of the panel itself. In all, each day probably entailed more waiting in line than a day at Disneyland, which is saying alot.

On top of that, I think the novelty of seeing previews, and getting "inside scoops" on your favorite shows or upcoming movies has worn off, after attending for 3 years straight. The first year around, it was fun because it was all so new. The next year was somewhat of a let down, but since Tania joined us the second time around, and we both cosplayed from some of our favorite animes, it was fun getting a taste of "fame" when fans of the show run up and ask for a photo with you, simply because you are in costume. While that aspect was still somewhat entertaining, the novelty of this aspect has also worn off, to a large degree.

So, in the end, most of comicon is just roaming the convention floor, in what is, in essence, a 3-4 block long, 1-block wide video game / anime / scifi & fantasy store.

If I lived within driving distance of the convention center, would I spend the $50 next year to get a 4-day pass, just in case I wanted to attend for a few days? Yes, probably. But with every 2-star hotel in the area knowing full well what week comicon is, and increasing their rates by upwards of 300%, in the end, it's really not worth it.

If the group of us that went had decided, instead, to simply stay in Irvine, at my place, and go to the beach everyday, or perhaps Disneyland one day, or just hung out and done nothing particularly unusual, it probably would have been equally entertaining, for a fraction of the cost.

Are You a Quack?

2007-06-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

One of my friends from my undergraduate schooling at UCLA likes to keep in touch with what most of the scientific community would consider... quack theories. In the process of discussing his ideas, many of which are interesting (if not based in any kind of scientific method that I could discern) and one such argument led me to a site claiming to have made an extraordinary leap forward in electrodynamics.

During the course of proving the new theory on this site, laying out each mathematical step that shows its consistency with the laws of electricity and magnetism, I spotted a math error. (For the mathematically/physically inclined, the site proposed that in a propagating electromagnetic wave, the electric and magnetic fields must be out of phase with each other, even though Maxwell's Equations for the nature of E, B fields require them to be in phase with each other.)

As a courtesy, I emailed the webmaster of this site and pointed out the math error.
Perhaps courtesy was my mistake.
Perhaps I should have Googled him first.

3 months later, I find myself unwilling to simply end my weekly email debate with him, and allow him to think he somehow "won" and yet, if I have to go over the same basic concepts one more time, I think I might just rip my hair out.

Originally, I just found the exchange amusing. He was trying to hard to sound like he knows what he's talking about, with enough scientific jargon to be persuasive from time to time. But as the email exchange continues, I have to fight the urge to direct him to this page. I doubt he'll find it as amusing as I did.

Attack of the Stupid Virus

2007-06-12T21:37:00.000-07:00

Infants need to be cared for in basically every regard. Children also need to be protected from, from others as well as themselves (though I recall when I was in elementary school, thinking that adults in general seemed to underestimate my intelligence far too much, as if I'm going to obliviously walk into oncoming traffic.) But beyond a certain age, my sympathy for self-destructive behavior quickly runs out.

In my TA experiences at UCI I've encountered a number of students who clearly cared nothing about the classes they took--or, at least, the physics class that I was teaching them. That's fine. Physics isn't everyone's cup of tea. But if you refuse to learn it, don't expect me to care. Or, more specifically, if you have clearly shown that you don't care about the material for 9 weeks straight, don't expect me to bend over backwards for you just before finals week.

A prime example was one quarter in which the discussions I taught each week were actually mandatory. This is slightly unusual for physics classes, but it was a GE class--cosmology for non-math majors. Essentially the purpose of the discussion each week was for me to go over the homework solutions to the problems they just finished turning in. Thus, they would know if they did the various homework problems correctly, and they would have solutions to study from, since many of the midterm/final questions came directly from homework. (The professor was actually relatively kind in this regard. I'm talking the exam questions were literally ripped from the homework assignments with numbers changed, and he allowed a full 9.5x11 sheet of paper full of notes to these exams.) During 10th week, just before finals, I actually received an email from a student asking if I was planning on making "homework solutions" available in some kind of digital format for all the students. Homework solutions? What exactly did he think I had been doing each and every week during discussion, section? The mandatory discussion section, no less. No, I told him. If he didn't bother to take notes the entire quarter during discussion, he could find a fellow student with homework solutions. I refused to provide them all to him.

At the college level, I have no sympathy for students who fail classes due to lack of effort. This is college. You pay to attend here. There are people who applied to this university and were rejected admittance (if you're at a reasonably good institution). Just flunk out and make room for someone worthwhile.

Interestingly, though, I feel the same thing about students at the high school level. Even though I realize that many kids do not want to be here, and they obviously do not pay to attend a public high school. Perhaps because I worked so hard in high school to get through the various honors classes and successfully graduate with an IB (International Baccalaureate) diploma, as far as I'm concerned, if you're 16 years old and you still think having a high school education isn't worth your effort, that's fine with me too. After all, McDonalds needs workers too. Maybe in 10 years when you're an assistant manager at some fast food restaurant, you can tell me how that worked out for you.

(Just for clarification, I'm not talking about people in what I might call more extreme circumstances--kids who have more life-and-death issues in their lives than passing classes. I'm talking about middle-upper class kids who are essentially just spoiled. Why study when they can go to the mall? Why go to class when they can sneak off to their boyfriend/girlfriend's place while the parents are away? Etc. Incidentally, this may also apply to kids who are, unfortunately, sufficiently spoiled by sufficiently wealthy parents, so that whether or not they actually learn anything in school has little impact on their future. Their parents have money, or their future career will be handed to them on a silver platter, regardless of whatever effort they put forth, etc… Still, in this case, get lost already and make room for kids who actually care. Smaller classrooms make for a better learning experience, for those who actually care.)

Names

2007-05-31T15:05:00.000-07:00

Names are funny things in works of fiction. Even in real life. Because for any name that seems out of the ordinary (whatever any given person thinks of as "ordinary") they sometimes seem silly the first few times around. But after becoming accustomed to said unordinary name, the novelty of it wears off and it seems perfectly normal.

A good (albeit nerdy) example was when I first played Final Fantasy 7 for the playstation back in something like middle school/early high school. The main character's name is Cloud. Cloud! What, are his friends named sky, earth, lightning, and atmosphere? It seemed like a stupid name, though I had to acquiesce that the name was almost certainly created in Japanese first, so maybe the fact that it just happens to be a word in english makes it seem like a funny name for me, but not for the creators. (Similarly, in the anime Dragonball Z, there is a character "Mr. Satan." I presume the creator wasn't thinking in English at the time, and didn't purposefully decicide to name a character after the Devil, though who knows, maybe it was intentional.) Nevertheless, play FF7 for a good 10 hours, or watch DBZ long enough, and these unusual names begin to seem almost normal.

The same can be said of names of almost anything. Races, towns, countries, they can all be named almost anything, and even peculiar names seem familiar after a while. So, as a person who needs to come up with countless names for characters, species, cities, etc, I find it extremely taxing to think up names that are fantasy-ish enough to not be things like "John, Will, Bob" but also not famously rediculous names like "Gr'naskh, Fleidk'huu'ura."

The problem is, almost any name seems silly at first, usually. Character names I think I'm getting the hang of (though I'm so particular about them, it takes me at least an hour to think up a single satisfactory name) but what about towns? Towns are hardly ever named with a random assortment of consonents and vowels, unless named after a person. But even taking some real life example, it just seems silly to name a slew of towns, say, [Person's Name]ville. Nor does it seems adequate to simply name a town after geological features like (real world example) "Little Rock," etc. And that's not even considering some truly bizarre real world town names, like "Celebration" (in Florida) or "Boring" (Oregon) or "Shoulderblade" (Kentuky).

In short, naming an entire nation's worth of small towns, large cities, rivers, roads, ... not to mention characters, is quite a chore. If anyone ever gets around to reading my blog again (all 3 of you who used to do so) please feel free to shout out some helpful suggestions.

Magic Really Was Fun...

2007-05-23T23:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm back after how many odd months of not blogging at all.
I'm not dead, I know all ... 2 of you (maybe) who used to read this will be relieved. If you ever think to check back for a new post again. Which you probably won't.

In the past week or so I've been itching to find a new online game to get in to. I'm not sure exactly why, but it started when I saw an ad for Corum Online, possibly in the ad space above the daily Penny Arcade comic. It looked like an interesting MMO, and it was free, so I gave it a shot. I played for maybe 20 mins. Then I saw an ad for PoxNora, an online, customizable tactics game (think Final Fantasy Tactics meets Magic the Gathering.) It was fun, but after playing only a few games I realized it was taking far too long. Even when one player was clearly more proficient with strategy it just took too long to win, like 1-2 hours maybe for a single game.

But it was fun, the strategy and all, in that it reminded me of Magic the Gathering, which was always fun. That then reminded me that MtG has been online for years now. If it was MtG I really wanted to play... well why not just play it?

So now I'm reinstalling Magic Online. I wonder if my interest will stay with this one. And I wonder if Ian still plays online...

Superman Returns

2006-07-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

As an astrophysicist, there are a few things I feel are necesarry to say about this movie, granted you simply accept the premise of Superman and all of his powers.

1. As nifty as it looks during the opening credits, planets with rings would not have two sets of rings perpendicular to each other, and especially not at the same range of radii. It looks exotic and nifty, but it just wouldn't happen (or if it did, they would quickly collide/scatter/turn in to some other configuration).

2. Sound require a medium to propagate. If one were to travel up through the Earth's atmosphere until you have actually reached the vacuum of space, and THEN decided to sit and listen of the sound of Bad Things Happening, you simply wouldn't hear anything. It doesn't matter how good your hearing if you are listening through a vacuum. Even if you have Superman's hearing.

3. The shock wave from Krypton's red giant sun would take FAR longer than a few seconds to reach Krypton. (the red giant part, I might add, IS correct--if we assume that Krypton's sun went supernova, and that is the cause of the planet's destruction, it would, in fact, be a red giant up until moments before it exploded). Even observing the collapse from Krypton, such that we have already waited for the light from the star to reach us, matter expelled from supernova do not travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Especially if Krypton was far enough away from the star to not be a molten ball of burning fire, itself (red giant = very big and very hot), it may take days, weeks for the shock wave to reach the planet.

Other than that, everything depicted in the movie is completely believable. =Þ

DaVinci Code Parody and X-men3

2006-06-02T17:08:00.000-07:00

As I continue to edit the novel I've written, and peruse the hatrack writing forum on tips and discussions about being a writer, and about books in general, I came upon a general consensus from the people who post there that the DaVinci Code was a horribly written book. I'm not sure to what degree I agree with that mentality. I enjoyed the story at least, even if it wasn't the Most Amazing Thing Ever, but I also only listened to it on audio while driving up the state. In other words, I didn't listen to it (or read it) closely enough to pay any real attention to the quality of the writing itself. It was mostly just backround story to make my 7 hour drive more enjoyable.

However, I did come across this DaVinci Code parody that I thoroughly enjoyed. (WARNING: parody possibly contains spoilers)

"I still don't understand," said Sophie, thinking of the horrible events that happened with her grandfather, events so shocking she didn't want to think about them. At all. She saw in her mind's eye the thing that she wasn't thinking about. It frightened her, and so she decided to not think about it for an even longer period of time.

I think, mostly, I'm just an easy audience in most cases.

XMEN 3
Speaking of usually being an easy audience, there is one major flaw I noticed in Xmen-3 that I just have to let out.

WARNING!!!
spoils the end of the movie so don't read the rest of this post if you havn't seen it yet, and if you plan to.

I'm serious.

Stop reading if you don't want it spoiled.

Ok, don't say I didn't warn you.

So at the very end when Jean Grey / Phoenix is going crazy and killing everything with her mind (how cool is that!) and the heros are escaping with THE BOY WHO NEGATES MUTANT POWERS, I was utterly shocked that the best solution they could come up with was "wolverine walk up to her using your healing powers to stay alive and kill her." After all you have

a)A mutant who is a good person underneath but who has lost control of her powers to the point of killing the people she loves the most

b)A boy who's mutant power is to completely nullify the mutant power of anyone within a certain proximity to him

and honestly no one had the thought to put a) and b) together? Walk to boy up until she's not a threat and knock her out, perhaps? Pick up a power-draining-syringe off the ground and stab her with IT instead of with wolverine's claws? Maybe they should try teaching the students at the mutant school to actually think once in a while. Y'know, with their brains.

Star Wars Fans

2006-03-23T14:32:00.000-08:00

Only Star Wars fans will go to this kind of trouble. And only Star Wars fans are capable of editting together a lightsaber duels thats as good if not better than many of those found in the actual movies.

I am referring, of course, to this video clip

It might take a while to buffer/download as it's about 5 mins long, but it's just a great clip, or I thought so anyway. Right up your alley, Dusten, if you at any point actually read this.

Being Sick Sucks

2006-03-19T15:34:00.000-08:00

Dunno where I got it from, but I caught the cold sometime last week. I forgot how annoying it is to be sick. It most definitely puts a cramp in my style. As luck would have it, Tania got sick this week too. OK, so that probably has less to do with luck and more to do with us being around each other alot.

I just hope I get fully better before next weekend, when Mom,Dad,Brent,Melissa and little Jack come down to the area to do a 3-day Disneyland vacation for Jack's 3rd birthday. As luck would have it, they had planned it for the very week I'm on spring break, so I get to join em for 3 days of Disneyland fun. Fun, assuming I'm not still sick.

Well, as is usually the case when I haven't updated this in awhile and feel the urge to do so, I'm doing it out of procrastination (yup, got a final tomorrow) so I'd best get back to study.

I love how I write these entries as if anyone reads them anymore.
So I will leave you, my adoring public, to wait at the edge of your seat until I can fill you in on finals, my sickness, and spring break at Disneyland.

My Novel Is Finished... Sort Of.

2006-02-28T00:50:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how much more likely I am to be productive when I'm spending the day with Tania at her place over the weekend... and she has studying for midterms she has to do... and the TV is a distraction. Thanks to the neverending series of tests Loma Linda gives her, in attempt (in my opinion) to drive all pharmacy students in their program to literally die of stress or sleep deprivation or starvation, I have now offically finished going through the fantasy novel I've been writing for the last bjillion and a half years.

At least, that's how long ago I began the process (note: a bjillion and a half is here defined to be about 10, plus or minus 1). Every few years I would remember the novel I had partially written sometime in high school and realize what I had written was nothing short of horrible, and the rewriting would begin, but this last summer, with all the procrastination from studying for quals, was when I really started taking it seriously, doing my best to write at a publishable-quality level. (Whether I have actually achieved as much I have no idea, but I certainly think it's ... not terribly horrble.)

I'm sure I'll probably read through it 2-3 more times, making little stylistic changes, editing a word here and there, maybe an extra sentence every few chapters, perhaps a paragraph somewhere in the depths of the work, nevertheless, the bulk work of the story is complete, to the point that I've been searching through submissions guidlines for publishers, looking to write a synopsis, etc.

So yeah. Woot! Um... now what?
It's funny, this has been kinda like a hobby always sitting in the back of my mind when I finished up what work I have. Now that it's coming to a close, I'm not sure I want to be done.
Well, I can always write a sequel. =)

Ultimate Showdown

2006-02-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

This is one of those flash animations that I just have to share with the world. It's hilarious, just great.

Ultimate Showdown

(Courtesy of Twig, who introduced it to me.)

The Eye Of Argon

2006-02-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

While perusing the The Hatrack Writer's Forum instead of actually working while in my office (something I do quite often, to the point that I've probably read through almost all of the current threads on the page) I came across the link to a story.

The story is apparently world famous for being the worst story ever written. It happens to be a fantasy story by an obvious fan of Conan the Barbarian, and I have to say, I can't disagree. Read the story carefully, or out loud, and try to get as far as you can without busting up laughing in its horrible...ness. I dare you. I triple-dog dare you!

The Eye of Argon

For even more hilarity, someone has constructed a version of this story as if it were a movie being mocked ala MST3K (Mystery Science Theater 3000) which adds to the hilarity of the story even moreso.

I have to say, trying to read through it makes me feel much better about my own writing.

More Like Worst Buy.

2006-01-16T16:19:00.000-08:00

Apparently I am an incredibly difficult person to buy Christmas gifts for. I admit it. Most things I would want for myself, I just buy, cuz there really aren't that many of them. I'm usually content with the same old games of warcraft, or with writing or basically doing the same things I always do, so I don't need new clothes, games, etc. Makes it hard to shop for me. So I always let it be known that Best Buy gift cards are always enjoyed on my part, because Best Buy stores are everywhere and they have all sorts of games, movies, and electronics that I like.

So I came out of Christmas with $100 in Best Buy money. Woot.

The other weekend Tania and I rented Soul Calibur 3 for the PS2 (becuase she liked the previous games) and we played for a bit and got hooked. So here is a video games that my girlfriend will play with me, which is like the coolest thing ever to a gamer like me, so I figure that's a good way to spend half of my Best Buy money. During that weekend we happened to stop by one to buy a second controller for her and I see a copy, but at that point we hadn't played it yet, so I didn't know if I would want to buy it or not. It's a relatively new game, so I figure it's not like some obscure game that will be hard to find if I do decide to get it.

Except that when I go to the local Best Buy... they don't have it. Ok, it kinda irked me, becuase I had gotten all addicted to it while surfing the web and finding information about the secrets you can unlock etc etc (while I was "working") but it's not like it was really their fault for not having it. I mean, I thought it was annoying they didn't, and they SHOULD carry it, but I didn't bother to check before I drove there, so not their fault.

At this point I'm set on buying it that day so when I get back home I check online for which stores near me actually have the game. Only 1 of the "nearest you" 6 stores actually had any in stock, so I call them on the phone to make sure. No one answers, after all at this point it's an hour before closing, so I figure they just stop answering the phones some time before they actually close. Now this particular store is something like 20 minutes away, farther than 3-4 other ones nearby. But I really want the game at this point. When I get there, they don't have it.

Now let me clarify. It's not that they, say, only had one copy when I checked online and someone got to it before me. Their computer STILL said they have 4 in stock. But they don't. Apparently games ship in bundles of 4, so one bundle must have gotten lost and no one has told the computer that.

Trips to Best Buy: 2.
Stores with the game: 0.

Now I've essentially given up on stores near me, so I order one for pick up in Riverside, since I go there all the time anyway. I know their computer says that have some in stock, but I don't take that at face value this time. But the next day they send me the confirmation email, to let me know that yes, we have your item waiting for you, so you can come with a photo ID and the confirmation number any time you want to pick it up. As it turns out, Tania decided to visit me on Saturday instead of me going to Riverside/Redlands, so she stops by the store with the number and an ID etc.
.
.
.
THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY.

Maybe it's just my high expectations, but to ME, when you have something in stock according to your computer, you should actually HAVE that item in stock like you say you do. But even then I understand that things get lost and the computer isn't always right. But when you send a *confirmation* email saying that your item is ready for pickup... let's just say they should be glad that Tania was the one who showed up at that point, becuase if I had to deal with them not having it when they said they did... again. Well I would have made quite a stink about it, asked to see a manager or something, maybe demanded money back for my gift cards because Best Buy never has anything even if they specifically say they do and I don't like to buy from liars.

I wonder if it's possible to get gift cards from like... amazon.com. If so I'm going to make a point to ask for that next year, or EBgames or something. Anything but Best -but only if we have it, and just cuz we say we do doesn't mean we actually do- Buy.

At this point I used my gift card to order the game online and tell them to ship it to me from whatever mystical magical closet of theirs actually DOES have the game in stock. I just got an email saying my item has been shipped. I'll believe that when I'm holding the game in my own two hands - not before.

Merry Christmas to All!

2005-12-24T23:51:00.000-08:00

(and to all a good night.)

That is all. You may go about your business now.

I'm an Uncle . . . Again!

2005-12-18T00:19:00.000-08:00

So my other brother also now has a baby. (well, technically it's his wife that had the baby.

Without further ado, I give you the offspring of Danny and Julia:

Robert Daniel Stewart
(Note: picture was taken when he was about 13 hours old.)

Turning Off Your Brain

2005-12-17T23:51:00.000-08:00

So a few weeks back, during finals week, a day before I had to give a presentation for a class of mine, I had jury duty.

Now, I've gotten summons for jury duty plenty of times in the past, but this was alwasy while I was away at college and I would get summons to my house in Santa Rosa. Only when I moved to Irvine did I officially change my address to be current, and jury duty finally caught up with me.

Why they felt it necesarry for me to show up at 7:45 when they didn't call my name (already randomly determined from the computer) until about 10am or so, is beyond me. Also beyond my comprehension was the need to give everyone an hour and a half for lunch. We broke at noon and were told we HAD to be back by 1:30, which, of course, meant that everyone was finally back at 1:45 and we started up again shortly thereafter.

I was THIS (holds fingers very close together) from having to serve on the jury, possibly the closest it is possible to get. By the end (it took all day, so by the "end" I mean, it was 5:30pm and most of the people in the building were gone) there were 15 prespective jurors in the room. The 12 jurors, 2 alternates, and me, meaning only I got to go home thanks to sitting in juror seat 18.

I don't think I was in that much trouble of staying if I had been picked earlier though, because the case involved a woman who had (allegedly, remember innocent until proven guilty) assaulted a (few?) police officers. The officers were going to testify, and the defense attorney kept asking prespective jurors the question "do you think it would affect you if the defendent chooses not to testify." The ability not to testify on your own behalf is a constitutional right, but I kept trying to explain that yes, if the woman didn't testify it would make me think she was guilty. The judge thought I was just copying something another juror had said so I would be dismissed.

Is it just me? Think about this situation: several eyewitness police officers are going to testify to (I'm assuming) the fact that she assaulted them, and she is NOT even going to stand up and say "no I didn't" for fear of incriminating herself. The judge kept telling me "even if I declare to the jury that you can draw no inference from the fact that she didn't testify." Well you can declare all you want, and I can try to pretend it doesn't matter all I want, but when it comes right down to it, yes that will influence my judgement alot.

If a defendent were to break down on the stand and admit "I'm guilty! I did (insert crime)!" and moments later someone tells you "oh, you have to disregard that" am I supposed to believe that ANYone can truly do that? Can anyone really just diconnect part of their brain like that, and ignore the conclusions that automatically start to form from that kind of information.

Honestly, any time I were in that kind of situation, and someone tried to instruct me "you may draw NO inference from the fact that X," my immediate response is going to be "ok, so what hidden information is there in the fact that I'm 'not allowed to consider' X. What is it that is being hid, that got deemed inadmissible, that they know but we're not allowed to."

But honestly, if someone says "you did it" and you won't even say "no I didn't" how can anyone not be more likely to think you guilty?

Resistance is Futile

2005-12-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

So after a long time of finding the following site pointless and stupid, I've finally caved in. That's right. I now have a page on myspace. I present to you: My MySpace Page (cue trumpets)

Enjoy.

What, Me? Excersize?

2005-12-04T00:16:00.000-08:00

So I was having a conversation with Tania about diet and excersize for no particular reason today. I think it started with her explaining how the atkins diet is tremendously unhealthy for you, as essentially the reason you lose weight is you deny your body sugar, which your brain needs to function properly, so you start burning up your fat for it. In any case, we concluded that DDR really is the most awesome form of excersize ever, and started talking how one day we should buy a full DDR arcade machine or something.

Yknow. One day when we're like millionaires.

We can put it in the same room with the Steinway grand piano.

Or not.

Anyway, this led me to searching ebay out of curiosity, to see if any DDR machines were actually for sale and how much. While an ebay search of "DDR arcade" didn't result in finding any actual arcade machines for sale, I did find a bunch of really high quality DDR pads to hook up to a ps2 / xbox / etc to play with the DDR games available for consoles.

I remember a long while back I tried out a DDR game for a console, but the problem was that the cheap, $20 pads were just useless for the skill level I'm at. But these things look straight out of the arcade. Some of them even have the handle on back just like a real arcade machine. That's so awesome! I'm seriously contemplating getting one, or better yet one of these "sets of 2" on ebay so I could play it with Tania, or do doubles mode. (And then, subsequently, I would of course have to go buy an actual DDR game. Minor detail.)

For now I think I'll hold tight.
After all, if anyone still needs an idea for a killer Christmas present for me...
:wink:
:nudge:

Pretty Astro Movie

2005-12-01T21:41:00.000-08:00

People tend to ask me what exactly it is that I *do* when I'm researching. Here is a pretty cosmology simulation. This is how the merger of dark matter halos might look like if the universe was ... a box. And if clumps of matter about the size of 10^10 solar masses were considered "particles."

A smaller, wussier quality version of the movie for the internet-speedily challenged can be found here.

So I take this data and try to extract useful physical insights from the data, trying to test the validity of current cosmological analytic theory with what happens in the simulation.

But my graphs rarely look as pretty as this movie does.

(note: These simulations were performed at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications by Andrey Kravtsov (The University of Chicago) and Anatoly Klypin (New Mexico State University). Visualizations by Andrey Kravtsov.)

Thanksgiving

2005-11-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

So hopefully all 4 of my readers had a Happy Thanksgiving. I sure did.

Usually when I head into Riverside I tend to gorge myself on the food I find there, which tends to lack in the microwavable/frozen variety I eat at home, much to my delight. Thanksgiving, then, the one day of the year officially sponsered by gluttony, was an even nicer change of pace for my stomach. I spent Thanksgiving with family of course, this year mostly extended family on my dad's side instead of the usual group I visit in Riverside. It was nice to spend some time with them. After much eating was complete, I retreated back to Ben and Deb's place to hang out with them and others who were escaping the post-turkey carnage (by which I mean sitting around on the couch patting our full bellies and trying not to lose consciousness while taking part / eavesdropping on various conversations floating around the room). We ended up going out to see the 4th Harry Potter movie (2nd time for me) which I enjoyed... again.

Then as the weekend wore on, Tania and I went up to the mountains to join a different group of relatives for a post-Thanksgiving day of, you guessed it, cooking a Turkey and eating it... again. It was amazing how chilly it was, considering this is southern california. I just assumed that nowhere down here could ever actually get cold, but Big Bear was pretty chilly, as it went below freezing after the sun went down, causing us to take a trip to the hot tub that was nearby at the timeshare place we were staying at. The hot tub was VERY hot. It was absolutely wonderful.

Of course no retelling of this weekend would be complete without mention of how I am becoming a pathetic old geezer. At some point Ashlee took a few of us on a hike, and I decided a good way to keep my blood flowing in the cold air was to do my best to follow her without walking on anything but rocks, which wasn't all the difficult considering the trail we were on. At least, it wasn't that difficult until I landed gracefully on a rock just like any other, and felt my back go ZAP! Apparently I pulled a ... something. Or maybe I sprained... something. In any case, there is a very annoying something in my back that has been making me cringe every so often for the past few days any time I bend a certain way or try to tie my shoelaces or what have you. Apparently I'm no longer a kid anymore that I can hop around from rock to rock and not have my body get mad at my frivolity. *ouch* There we go again. Just when I thought it finally went away. Stupid back.

Speaking of things that go away, apparently my cousin's daughter, Elise, who until now has always been afraid of me for some reason, to the point that if I enter a room she will pretty much stop speaking / playing / moving a muscle altogether, has apparently gotten over that fear. This weekend when she saw me up in the mountians she actually spoke to me (I believe she was informing me at the time how the plastic playground she and Ashlee were playing on was now her home). Even more shocking was later when she sat near me and began showing me some of her toys and talking about them. I was so shocked I didn't even know how to react. Something wasn't computing. Not only was she was speaking NEAR me, she was actually talking TO me. Maybe I've been in Riverside often enough that she feels comfortable around me. Or perhaps she's just old enough that I'm no longer scary (I'm not to sure about that one, after all I'm such a bone-chilling guy, what child could find me un-scary.)

Fun side-note: for some reason, early on in the weekend I decided to borrow a phrase from the movie Serenity, and ended up using it 4-5 times that weekend. People kept asking me what my plans for the weekend were.
"Are you going to stay here?"
"Are you going to go stay in Riverside?"
"Are you going to go home?"
"What are you planning on for tomorrow?"
"Will you be staying in the mountains overnight?"
etc.

"I am a leaf in the wind."

And I was, floating on the winds of whim, following the flow and basically making no plans for myself that went farther than a few hours into the future. It was very relaxing. I'll have to be a leaf in the wind more often.

Life Imitates Art

2005-11-15T14:42:00.000-08:00

One of the webcomics I read every day / every few days features a character that, for no apparant reason, has a cat on his head all the time. I always thought this was a kinda fun and cute everpresent aspect to that webcomic world.

Today while on campus walking to class I saw the strangest thing. From the front it looked like maybe this guy was wearing a fur sash/scarf around his neck. But once he passed us and Eric and I looked back, we found that it was, in fact, a kitty cat standing on his shoulders. Possibly it had been in the hood to the guy's sweatshirt, but at the moment it was just standing across his neck, on his shoulders. It was the cutest thing.

Eric: That's so weird... why does he have a cat with him?
Me: If I had a cat that would sit on my shoulder all day I would do that too.

Halloween

2005-11-01T23:40:00.000-08:00

Went to a costume party with Tania for halloween. I went as, you guessed it, Phantom of the Opera. But did you guess that I went specifically as the phantom as he dresses up to appear at the masquerade ball? I bet you didn't. Well, unless you looked at the picture below before you read this text. CHEATER!

It was fun. Although, in all those clothes, and that cool deluxe cape (which I couldn't help but buy, it was just so cool) and the mask and everything I got very hot. Especially with all the dancing. Hope you all (all 3 of you that read this) had an equally fun Halloween!

It's Funny 'Cuz It's True

2005-10-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Professor: *explaining a particularly complex problem, for a premed physics class in any case.
Pre-Med Student: "Why the hell do we have to learn this?"
Professor: "This material saves lives."
Pre-Med Student: "What do you mean, the material saves lives?"
Professor: "Well, for instance, it keeps certain people out of medical school."

Truly enough, I've TA'd enough classes that were filled with premeds to be quite concerned about people's lives one day being in their hands. Hopefully those ones that were truly incapable of what seemed to be the simplest of things simply don't make it into med school.

$0.53 Movie

2005-10-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

So I was hanging out with Tania yesterday and we decided to rent a movie. For some reason I had remembered a movie I saw in class one year at UCLA (for a GE cluster about artificial intelligence and evolutionary design), The Thirteenth Floor. In my opinion, it's very underrated in general because it came out the same year as the Matrix, and the synopsis / theater trailer made it seem like a matrix-copycat movie, when in fact it's quite different in many regards. In any case, it's a really good movie I felt like seeing again, and Tania had never seen it, so we went to the local Hollywood Video store to go rent it.

It's been what seems like ages since I've actually rented a movie. In college I tended to lean toward the "see it in theaters or just download it instead" route, or even just buying the movie instead. After all, why pay 5-6 bucks to rent a movie when it only costs a little more to see a movie in the theaters, and only, say, twice that much to buy it permanently. I mean, honestly who needs a movie for 5 days anyway? They should really just charge 1/5th as much and give it to you for one day. In any case, we finally find the movie and head to the cashier and Tania signs up with them, since we're near her place in Redlands, so it's her local video renting place we're at.

After the girl at the counter finished registering Tania in the system or whatever, she turns to us and says "53 cents." We both stood there for a second. I said something to the effect of "huh?" and the girl repeated that it was $0.53 to rent the movie. I pull some change out of my pocket. "So I'll buy the movie if you buy dinner," I said to Tania with a grin as I gave the girl two quarters and three pennies for our rental.

It's not like it's always that cheap there, but they were having some kind of special promotion that day for really cheap rentals. Noramlly it would have been 2-3 bucks. Still, not as bad as I remembered. Maybe video rental places finally realize not many people will pay 1/2 the price of the movie to see it once and not while in the theater.

Most. Horrifying. Dream. Ever.

2005-10-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

(Note: This dream ends gruesomely and quite terrifyingly. Just wanted to warn the squeemish. You be fairly warned, says I.)

It started off as a normal enough dream...

Dusten, Chris and I were hanging out in an outdoorsy-mall type place browsing around, and we start chatting it up with a couple of cute girls. One of the girls seemed to want to go home or something, but the other one and I were hitting it off, getting along pretty well. Her name was Jen, I think, and along with going to college she had two jobs, working at a movie theater and at a pool. What she did at a pool I don't remember asking, but for some reason she didn't say she was a lifeguard, she just referred to her other job as "the pool," much in the same way we used to refer to work as "the theater" when I worked at a movie theater one summer.

Eventually these girls need to head home, but didn't have a ride, so we offer to take them. Once we get there, Dusten and Chris needed to go back to my place to get my car and bring it back to me. I'm not sure why I wouldn't just go with them to my car, but it seemed at the time as if that weren't an option for some reason. In fact, they almost left me there and took off, because I had mistakenly thought my car was at this girl's house. Why would it be at this stranger's house? Because it's a dream, and dreams are weird like that. In any case, I was now alone at this girl's house with Chris and Dusten gone, to be back "in an hour."

I must have been napping in the car ride there, because I felt very just-woke-up, not really thinking straight, taking in the sights with hazy, tired eyes. Jen's friend either lived with her or was, in fact, her sister, because she went into this house too and began to make herself at home. Jen invited me in, and I felt somewhat awkward coming into this girl's house, since I had just met her. It was a VERY nice house, and I merely assumed belonged to her parents. It was all white, if I can remember, with a beautiful wooden spiral staircase that went straight up several stories near the entrance of the house, in the giant entrance.

The staircase was the first thing I saw on my tour of the house. But when I got to the top it wobbled back and forth severely, and I remember almost falling off. In fact I remember there being a long vertical wooden pole, all carved and antique-looking, that I had grabbed onto for support and it broke in half. After a big of rearranging, Jen's sister (who could apparently reach the pole to help from the bottom floor... which made perfect sense at the time) helped reattatch it, while freaking out about me breaking it. Obviously she didn't like me being there.

Jen showed me the rest of what felt like "the house" but it was actually just the one giant, flowing room on the ground floor. There was a giant TV on the right side, where the sister/friend I had met and another girl a bit older than they were sat watching TV in silence. On the other side was a grand piano, completely white, along with everything else (the carpet, the ceiling, the walls,...) and so, of course, I began to play.

But the notes didn't seem right. I kept trying to play the Final Fantasy prelude (the scales I play at the end of my really long FF piece, for those who are familiar with my piano skills) but I kept hitting the wrong notes, or merely not hitting enough notes, or something. I then realized that although the piano was laid out like a grand piano, it was just the size of an electronic keyboard at the actual keys. If fact, it was smaller than most keyboards, about the size of one of those kiddy-keyboards that have only 1 octave of notes. Well that didn't seem to matter to Jen and she kept asking me to play something if I supposedly can play piano. My explanations that there just weren't enough notes didn't seem to appease her.

Needless to say I was frustrated, especially since I was still very tired, vision blurry, and I just wanted to sleep more than anything. It was clear they were letting me stay until Dusten and Chris got back just to be nice, but I had overstayed my welcome and they wanted me out. I felt that somehow I knew it was about the time for the rest of the household to arrive home, and they didn't want to have to explain who I was to their parents (particularly, their father.)

(note: this is where the dream STOPS being crazy and weird in a FUN, dream-like way)

Wanting to get away a bit, leaving the rest of the household be, I was at the top of the staircase again, just chilling until it was time to leave, vaguely observing the girls watching TV as I peered over the side of the stairwell into the giant room (the staircase had now tranformed for some reason, at the top, into a more classic, wide, flowing, carpeted staircase.) I don't remember hearing a car pull up, or the front door open, but there was now a large, slightly round man standing at the entrance. I don't remember if he was wearing black, or red, or a combination, but something about this man told me he was not good. Perhaps it was the (I forget now what it was exactly) large axe? or chainsaw perhaps? or butcher's knife he held in his right hand, his arm casually laying by his side, the weapon drooping down almost to the floor.

Many more people appeared. They didn't actually walk through the door, that I remember anyway, but they were certainly there. They couldn't see me up in the stairway (no one from the bottom floor could see me up there. It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.) I don't particularly remember these men grabbing hold of the 3 girls, nor do I remember them trying to break free, or run, or fight back, but what I do remember was that this man began hacking Jen into pieces.

Arms and legs gone in a flash, soon they had spread her entire body, in various different sized pieces, onto a large, white, rectangular table that was now in the room somehow. The other men that had appeared brandished their large butcher's knifes (at least I think that's what they were. They were the large, square blades a foot long or so and about as deep as they were long. What I think of as the classic "big old - murdering knife", not the actual large knives most people have in the kitchen.)

The girl's entire body was chopped into tiny pieces on the table as she watched. The man held her head, and from the way her eyes still moved I could tell, somehow, she was still alive. Unlike the previous unusual things, this didn't even make sense in the dream. How was she still alive if she was only a head? How cruel, I remember thinking, it's not even OVER for her - she has to watch the rest play out. Eventually the other men brought out flat metal grate type-tools to mash the meat of her flesh even finer, as if they were preparing ground beef for dinner.

They repeated that procedure with the other two girls, as well as countless other times. I don't remember where they got the other victims from, I just remember it went on for what seemed like forever. All the while, Jen - and only Jen's - head was being held by the giant, bloodspattered man, observing it all. He held her by her hair, and just like his weapon, his arm was flat at her side, her neck almost touching the ground and she saw everything. That was when she saw me. I noticed that for some reason she had a third eyeball in her mouth, pointing outwards as if it were a fucntional eye, but obviously it didn't work.

I hid behind the staircase, and peeked through from another angle, but her eyes found me there too, they were following me now, staring at me wide-eyed as if it were all my fault. Once again I felt dizzy, tired, vision blurring, fading in and out of consciousness as I stood there on the stairway. After a few minutes I remember opening my eyes to see the giant man coming up the stairway at me, no longer holding Jen's head, but still holding his weapon.

I distinctly remember trying to throw myself backwards off the stairs as hard as I can. "I have to kill myself before he can get to me," I remember thinking, in a panic. I turned and tried to leap off the edge, but I felt his blade hit my back, sticking into it, holding me on the stairway. I remember closing my eyes, because at least if I close my eyes I don't have to feel what happens anymore (much like closing your eyes at the movies means you don't have to look. It made perfect sense at the time, I swear.)

Now I was the one on the table, watching the men hack at my body and grind it into meal just like the others, knives chop chop chopping and metal grids grinding what remained until it looked about ready to be prepared.

Fade to black.

Fade back in, observing what appeared to be an outdoor grocery-stand. I don't remember the label on them (it wasn't any wide-spread official label I might remember) but it was something like "Mama's old fashioned brand muffins." Don't ask me how I knew, since none of the men were at the stand selling them, but something inside told me with certainty what the secret ingredients of those muffins were. I watched people buy them. Not by the hordes, and not once in a full moon, but just like any normal grocery-type stand, people stopped by once in a while to buy some.
"Their muffins are the best," I heard someone say.

EndDream.

Honest to God, this was the dream I just had.
I'll think twice next time I decide to take an afternoon nap.

Serenity

2005-10-04T00:19:00.000-07:00

Ever since Ian got me hooked on Firefly and I hurridly bought the complete series (14 episodes) on DVD and watched them through in, I think, a weekend or so, I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Serenity. Last friday it came out.

Being a big fan of the TV show, which was sadly cancelled, I was expecting a lot.

I was surprised.
It was BETTER than I was expecting.
Without seeing it a second time and really paying very close attention to every moment of the film I'm not sure I can say exactly what things make the movie great. There was lots of action and suspense and humor and tension and drama and overall it was very entertaining, but it was more than that.

Underneath it all there was a very real but subtle theme of "when is something worth dying for" that I really liked. At what point do you stop running away or stand idly by and watch things unfold? At what point do you essentially throw your life away for an ideal, for something to believe in, for something to give you life meaning. I think overall it was the way the characters managed to do heroic things with actual purpose, other than "I'm the hero of the story, and this is what heros are supposed to do."

All I can really say is that it's been a very long time since I've seen a science fiction movie this good. Maybe the original Matrix? It's not often I cough up the ten bucks or so to go see a movie in the theaters, but this one I think I'm going to have to go see again.
So if any of you ... 6 or so people who actually read this agree in my taste in movies to any tiny degree, go now and watch this movie. It's really just that good.

Corpse Bride

2005-09-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

Went and saw Corpse Bride, the new Tim Burton puppet-thing movie.
Meh.
Maybe I was just excpecting too much because of Nightmare Before Christmas, which is a great movie, but something was lacking. After seeing a clip from the movie at comicon a while back, I was expecting more than I got. It had an interesting premise, but didn't seem to really do anything with it.
Also, the thing about musicals (which, as a genre, I tend to enjoy thoroughly) is that unless the musical numbers are good, they tend to just bring the whole thing down. I'm the kind who loves musicals and music in general. Usually, even if the plot is lacking, as long as the music is good I'm happy. But at one point during the movie when some characters started singing, I kinda sighed and said to myself "ugh, you're kidding me." It just didn't seem to fit the moment that well.
Also, there seemed to be little to no character development. Or rather, it seemed that the characters "developed" just to fit what the plot said they should do, not because it actually made sense with their personality/the situation.

It's an ok movie I guess, but more like one to rent, not one to go pay ten bucks to see in the theater.

Quals - Results

2005-09-18T23:57:00.003-07:00

--- Please hold for a public service anouncement from the "Kyle, the Physics Grad" ---

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
-runs out of breath and gasps for air-
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOT!

Thank God! Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!
To those who say miracles don't happen I say puh-HUH!

--- This has been a public service anouncement from "Kyle, the Physics Grad" ---

(P.S. I passed my Quals. Did I forget to mention that?)

Stupid Spam Bots

2005-09-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

So recently I've noticed alot of comments popping up by spambots, with links to whatever stupid webpages in the comment box and remarks like "great blog! check out my [stupid product] at [stupid product's webpage hyperlink]. You are super awesome! hooray for BLOGS! I am a spambot!?@!"

To all ... 4 of you who actually read and comment on here, I've decided not to allow any anonymous users to comment anymore. Even without a blogspot account you can still comment by clicking "Other" and just putting your name in the name box. (It also gives a box where you can input your webpage, to hyperlink your name to, but you can just leave it empty and still reply.)

edit: So I guess that option doesn't really exist, I've added word verification instead, where they show you a picture of a word and you have to type what it is to prove you're not a bot. I know, such a hastle, but seeing as a significant (50%?) percentage of my comments are now spambots, I figure it's worth the hastle.

Stupid Spambots.
They're almost as annoying as people who play DoTA games of warcraft 3 and then leave as soon as they die, or for some other lame excuse equivalent to My toes are cold!
Almost.

Qual, the Fourth

2005-09-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

Classical mechanics is over. It was a little harder than I had expected, in that none of the problems could be worked out very easily, and the math resulted in answers that weren't so pretty, but I knew how to do them all, the method anyway, and got answers for most of the test. Not as well as I'd hoped perhaps, but I still think I did pretty well on it.
4 down.
0 to go!
DONE!
WOOT I'm done with Quals.... well... for now.
Now it's time to cross my fingers and pray that I pass.
Please God let me pass.

Qual, the Third

2005-09-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

Statistical Mechanics, aka statmech, the test that destroyed us all. Here is a professor who is completely clueless as to what we actually learned in class and what kinda of problems we solved. The test was insane, asking us bizarre questions the likes of which we had never seen. I think perhaps the professor decided he didn't want anyone passing statmech this year, as last year's qual was about a thousand times more reasonable. If I managed to get 50% or so of that test right, I'd be happy.
At least it's over.
3 down.
1 to go.
.
.
.
Just one to go,
just one more,
almost done,
almost done...
I can't wait.

Qual, the Second

2005-09-07T13:02:00.000-07:00

The quantum mechanics exam is over. The problems were pretty nasty, but I'm pretty sure everyone thought so. All things considered, I think I did ok. If this were a class, and the final was 100% of the grade, I would feel pretty confident that I passed, but I'm not sure how strict they are with the quals.
In any case, its over.
2 down.
2 to go.

Qual, the First

2005-09-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

The E&M Qualifying Exam is over. It could have gone better, but it could have gone much worse. I felt like I knew what I was doing much more so than during the inclass exams, but I would guess I still only got about 50% of it right or so. However it turns out, at least its over.
1 down.
3 to go.

Quals (The preperation)

2005-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Quals, a.k.a. "Comprehensive Exam," formerly known as "Qualifying Exam" are a series of physics tests a phd student must take to advance to candidacy for the phd. Basically, the first year of grad school is spent taking phyiscs classes covering all "elementary," or, perhaps better stated, all fundamental areas of physics.

Classical Mechanics
Quantum Mechanics
Electricity and Magnetism
Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics

The exam consists of 3 days in a row of 3 hours of testing each day, and each student gets exactly 2 attempts to pass. If you pass the first time great. If you fail the first attempt and pass the second time great. If you fail twice, you do a masters research thesis and once you get your masters you're done.
My first attempt is in one week.
Studying is a full time job right now. 9am-7pm every day = studying.
Words cannot express how relieved I would be if I manage to pass the quals on this my first attempt, so I offer this to the winds of fortune: something crazy I can do in rejoice should I actually manage to pass them.

"I'd be so thrilled if I actually passed, if I actually pass I'm going to [fill in the blank]"

My first thought is to do something crazy, fun, and unusual (for me) like dye my hair some bizarre color (ie green), but I'd like the hear what anyone else can come up with. Swear if I actually pass I'm going to do.... something.... I'm gonna rock and roll all night and party every day... or something.

P.S. Bonus points for fun wacky things that also relate to physics. You may begin thinking of ideas....
give it time...
almost there..
NOW!

One Zero vs. Zero One

2005-08-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

So last weekend Tania and I decided to a piano ... I mean... um... Riverside. Yknow, to visit with family. Not because of the piano. Or the pool. *Glances around suspiciously.* In any case, while we were in town we thought we'd catch CoT (Conspiracy of Thought) playing at some music store in town, since we like the music and were in town anyway. So we hopped on a computer and looked up the address posted for where they would be playing.

Address posted:
Sounds Like Music in Riverside, CA.
10117 Hole Ave. 951-343-9333

I typed into Mapquest:
11017 Hole Ave.
Riverside, CA.
(why I didn't copy-paste the address is beyond me)

I printed out:
nothing.

I remembered:
"Go down Magnolia, turn right onto Hole,
Go for 2-3 blocks.
"Sounds Like Music"
11017 Hole. (ie I correctly remembered the incorrect address as I had typed it into mapquest.

So as it turns out, 11017 != 10117
10 vs. 01 wasted about an hour of our lives.
I've learned my lesson and learned it well. Always copy and paste addresses into mapquest. Assuming yourself capable of memorizing a 5 digit number for 10 seconds can be a fatal mistake.
Well, in all fairness, not a FATAL mistake, but certainly a frustrating one.

Incidentally, CoT was playing somewhere else briefly later that night so we got to see them anyway. Good show. They had twice in a day. They looked tired lol.

The One Thing

2005-08-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

What follows is a completely random, arbitrary, and pointless story that, although it has a conclusion, is on the whole relatively irrelevent. But I thought it was funny, and that's what counts.

*For legal disclaimer purposes, the follow events and people represented are completely fictional. Any resemblence to real people or events is purely coincidental, in a very real, and legally binding sense.*

A week ago or so I finally got around to finding a new file sharing program so I can download songs I like and put them on my ipod. Usually if there's a band I like I'll just buy the CD but more often than not I only like one song here and one song there. So driving home from campus the other day that song "One Thing" by some group is on the radio, so I mentally note to see if I can get it. Then that reminds me of like a bjillion years ago. (Let us define 10 < 1 bjillion < 20)

It was way back when I went to Hartstone camp with my church's youth group, I recall on the busride there... or back.. or... somewhere, they played alot of good christian songs on the speaker. At that time the only music I ever really listened to was Weird Al, so I was unfamiliar with pretty much all the songs. I remembered the song "Jesus Freak" well enough to go buy the corresponding DC Talk CD when I got back home, but there was anohter song that I really liked, but I didn't know what it was. I just remembered they kept saying "The one thing that I know..."

Over the years I tried searching the internet for a song called "The One Thing" or some variation but didn't find it, and I couldn't very well look up lyrics just knowing 3 words or so... or so I thought at the time. Last week I looked again, googling "the one thing the one thing the one thing that I know" and finally discovered, to no particular surprise, that its a Jars of Clay song. The title of the song is Liquid.
Liquid.
Liquid?
More than half of the song, half of the lyrics, are saying
"This is the one thing (the one thing) the one thing that I know.... This is the one thing (the one thing) the one thing that I know."
And the title of the song is Liquid.
No wonder I never found it.
If I had ever bothered to ask someone I'm sure they would have recognized the song and pointed me in the right direction, but Christopher Colombus didn't need directions and neither do I. I just takes a little longer...

That's it, that's all I have to say.

I'm done.

Stop reading.

Go away.

The Final Frontier of Nerddom.

2005-08-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

I've been a nerd for many years - most of my life in fact. (and proud of it) We'll recently I've begun to delve into what I must consider the final frontier, ultimate form of nerdhood.
First there was Star Trek / Star Wars / Sci. Fi.
And there was studying science.
Reading fantasy novels.
Playing video games. ALOT.
Playing MMORPGS. Video Games designed to take up every ounce of free time you have and be as addicting as possible.
Writing a fantasy novel.
Wearing science-humor Tshirts. (I still say the "and God said: [Maxwell's Equations] and there was light." is the most brilliant Tshirt ever.)

And now I've joined some of my physics buddies in playing...
Trumpets: Da, da da DA!
D&D.

Thats right. As if RPG video games aren't nerdy enough, we're sitting down and playing with dice, pen and paper, and I've got to say it's pretty fun. I can understand how I thought it was stupid when I was a kid, because it takes a certain level of maturity to roleplay your character / create a non-stupid fully interactive world (for the DM) for the other players. But it's definitly fun.

For those who are unfamiliar with dungeons and dragons (D&D) or think it's evil for some reason...
This hilarious flash cartoon should set you straight. (Just click on the words "Watch This Movie!").

Though that was a parody. Our session aren't that stupid/nerdy. At least I hope not lol.

Hello World.

2005-07-23T00:13:00.000-07:00

So just out of curiosity... anyone actually read this?
I've noticed a distinct lack of comments for, like, forever.

Tania mentioned that you have to have a login/password for Blogger to reply, but that's only if you want to reply with the "Blogger" tab highlighted. You can click "Other" and enter your name or leave it anonymous and just leave the comment.

So if anyone actually reads this.... how about you lemmie know, just to satisfy my curiosity.

Comic-Con

2005-07-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

So my preview promised a more in depth discussion of ComicCon, and without further adew... adoo.... adue......
without further delay, here we are. I know how desperately all of you have been awaiting my update, all, what... 3 of you.

So most of the panels during the day were interesting but only if you found a subject where you are hardcore interested in the material. Since I'm not all that into comics, and was mostly there for the movie/anime/video game aspects, I only *really* enjoyed a few select panels.

-Jhonen Vasquez, creator of Invader Zim. Much younger than I thought he would be (mid-late 20s I would guess?) he has quite an up-front sense of humor. Unlike the carefully political answers most people give, especially on movie panels (actors / directors / etc...) he was very open with how he felt about things. He didn't have alot of nice things to say about Nickalodeon, though he didn't badmouth them either, but he's not a very "kids program" kind of guy, and Zim reflects that, and thus it got canceled. (IMO, it would have been a hit on cartoon network, adult swim, but no, definitly not a Nickalodeon show.) But, all thing said and done "They did air it [a specific episode], after all. I mean, he [Zim] ripped a kid's eyes out while he's screaming in agony and replaces them with cybernetic eyes. How f*#%ing sweet is that."

My favorite thing about this panel was simply the way he answered Q&A from the audience, which pretty much all panels have. Originally he was going to pick good questions from his email to answer instead, but he said they all sucked. He opened the floor to Q&A, on the condition that the audience vote if they were worthy of answering or not, and if they weren't he was going to have the audience rip the questioner limb from limb. Unfortunatly, it never happened. All in all, a hilarious hour.

-Kevin Smith, "Silent Bob" and director of Dogma, Clerks, etc...
However crude and gay-joke-oriented his humor may be, it's makes you laugh, very easily and consistantly. At some point, someone in the middle/back of the audience went on a rant about religion. I forget whether it was because of Dogma, or the title of Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks (mocking Passion of the Christ). As expected he went on a very short rant about being catholic and having a sense of humor etc. What I loved though, was later when answering a question about whether his parents (his dad specifically) like/liked his movies, he said his dad died. The person followed up "well did he like your movies?" and Kevin Smith replied something to the effect of "How the f*** should I know? He's in the f***ing ground........ or with Jesus" and with the word Jesus he gave a wink and point a finger slyly at the portion of the crowd where the religious protest originated earlier. Absolutely hilarious.

I also liked how everytime he would finish answering a question or something or other that usually results in clapping from the audience for a minute or two, he would tell us all to stop it / shut up / etc, becasue there isn't time for clapping, which there wasn't. All in all, very hilarious.

-Orson Scott Card, author of the Ender's Game saga, and others. This was mostly answering questions about Ender's Game, future stories in the Ender universe, the upcominc Ender's Game movie and whether WB has finally officially agreed upon it or something or other. (Not sure exactly how movies work, but they bought the option from him to do a movie of it, which expires this year or something, so they pick it up or they don't...) Not a whole lot to talk about here, it was fun because the Ender saga is my favorite storyline/ set of books.

Other than the panels during the day, there were all sorts of fun things to do / see in the main convention hall. Imagine, if you will, a typical comic/anime store. Now make that store a block wide and like 5 blocks long. There you have it. Except, of course, that all big names had giant displays along with things for sale. Here are the (albeit, low quality) pictures I took with my cell phone of some of the cooler displays.

This giant Boba Fett, in the Star Wars area, stood atop the "building" they had in the convention center.

Below Boba Fett there was this Darth Vader who (it's hard to tell 'cuz the picture I took was particularly blurry here) was made out of legos, I'm pretty sure.

Although there wasn't actually a Family Guy area, specifically, this giant blown up Stewie was at one corner of the convention center, and made a good meeting spot when we split up and needed to group together. "I'm under Stewie."

In the DC Comics area there was alot of cool stuff, but I thought this giant, probably life sized statue of Batman was the niftiest.

Again in the Star Wars area, there was this life sized Yoda, which you may or may not be able to tell from this picture was *incredibly* detailed. It looked essentially like Yoda was pulled right off the screen.

There were other cool things / statues / props from the 4th Harry Potter movie / etc. But most of the time I was busy looking around / shopping / drooling / resting to actually take pictures of everything. Besides, you don't really get the effect of most of the stuff with pictures as you would in person. But another thing that was fun was the characters in costume that obviously were hired to be there in very official costumes. Usually these people are easy to spot because, for example, you'll see a Darth Vader or Stormtrooper standing around the Star Wars area posing for pictures all 4 days. Here are a few good "official" costumes I saw. Or at least, I figured they were official.

This Link was standing near the Nintendo area next to the playable demo of the Zelda game (which looks AWESOME by the way.) I never got around to getting to play it becuase there was always.. ALWAYS a huge line to play it.

Batman and Robin. 'nuff said.

Then there were costumes done by people, fans, which were sometimes lame (as in not very well done / detailed) or not.. quite.. right (as in trying to play a scantily clad anime something or other with a figure that should not be scantily clad.) But sometimes they were very well done.

This Bender I thought was great. It's hard to see, but he even has the cigar in the mouth (permanently) that adds a certain touch to it. The Leela behind him was ok (hard to do a cyclops realistically after all).

I would have never imagined someone could sucessfully Cosplay General Greivous from Ep. III. But this guy was GOOD. It's hard to see in this pic, but his actual legs blended with his cape, so the add-on limbs looked like the only ones, and were positions pre-bent over so when the guy walked it looked like the hunched walk that Greivous does in the movie. All in all, probably the best non-official costume we saw the whole time.

Ah the girl dressed as Slave-Leia. At one point, when we had run across her for the 3rd time in the weekend or so, Dusten told her she was awfully brave to wear that outfit and she laughed and said thanks. She had pretty much the undivided attention of everyone within a 10 foot radius of her. Several times we would see large groups of people and go to see what the commotion was about to find her obliging people with posed pictures. Indeed, dressing as metal-bikini slave Leia at a comic con is one sure fire way to be the center of attention for 4 days straight. Not that any of us were complaining... she's hot.

Well, hopefully this was enough to get the essence of the Comicon experience. It was a blast, but honestly I think 4 days was just too much.

San Diego Comic Con. (preview)

2005-07-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

So I don't have the time or energy to discuss at length, but I just got back from ComiCon in San Diego. Dusten, Chris, Brian and Evan came down from S.R. and we all had the full, 4-day passes to the con.

Wow. I'm tired.
Soooo much stuff. Comic books, anime, movies, signings, celebrities, and the convention floor itself full of everything from little "anime-shop"esque booths to huge DC comis or Star Wars centers with life awesome statues / life size replicas / characters in costume.

Every day was packed from about 9am to midnight. Wow.

Just when you think you've seen it all...

2005-07-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

I spent the 4th of July in Riverside with family, seeing as the alternative would have been to sit around my apartment and play Warcraft III or otherwise do... nothing. As always, Riverside was a blast. Good food, good family, good times, and a 90 degree pool that you could just lounge around in all day and never want to get out - which is essentially what Tania and I did

Of course, like any Riverside trip, most of the entertainment was provided by Ashlee who is, what... 7(?) now. She's always the cutest little thing with everlasting energy and imagination. (While in the pool, she suddenly tranformed into a "vampire shark" and then "bit" me and Tania, thus, apparently, turning into vampire sharks under her control. (Luckily for me, as I explained to her after 10-20 minutes of playing along, I was immune to her powers and thus able to get back on my raft and lounge while she was ordering me to do something or other.)

At some point, Ashlee very secretively went up to Margie and whispered something in her ear. "Yes, now is a good time," was the reply and so Ashlee went up to the "stage" (only if you've seen their backyard will you understand) and proceeded to sing "You're a Grand Old Flag." Apparently she had been practicing on this song, and on the flag with flagpole she had constructed with crayons, paper and a bamboo shoot, for almost a month now.

The cutest moment of the night, however, which I thought I just had to mention lest it become lost in the endless sea of "Ashlee = cute" memories, was when we were watching the fireworks. We had driven down to the end of the street where we could see them, and so we could all sit in the back of Brad's truck while watching them. Little had I known that my cousin Jackie (... Jaquie? Jacquee? hmm.. too many Jacquies in my life I think...) has a phobia of fireworks. Evidentally, she hasn't been able to watch them for years and years. Even at Disneyland, she said, when it's fireworks time she always has to find a bathroom and hide out until they're over.

Well this year she joined us. And having explained her phobia to Ashlee, Ashlee took it upon herself to comfort her Mommy while the fireworks were going off.

BOOM! (red and green explosion)
Ashlee: It's ok, its just Christmas, thats all.

BOOM! (white, slowly fading explosion that droops down)
Ashlee: It's just palm tree, its ok.

I forget most of the others, as I was concentrating my mental energy on not tickling
Tania, who was sitting in my lap, and leaning back as softly as possible on the part of Brad's truck that was jutting into my back.

Needless to say, it was a good day. Fun was had by all.

I Can Relate.

2005-06-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

Hilarious comic.
I've been accused of having this same lack of desire to go outside even on beautiful days. Mostly, I'm guilty... mostly.

Grading Finals

2005-06-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

LMAO.
So I'm grading finals for the class I've been TAing and I come across someone trying to do the first problem ( a center of mass problem). It's obvious he forgot the forumla so he wrote down a few random scribblies and left
Xcm =..........
Ycm =..........

and boxed them, as if to come back to the problem later.
Underneath that he wrote, I kid you not, "Yeah... I got nothin...."
I'm tempted to give him a point just cuz he made me actually laugh out loud while grading.

I'm DONE!

2005-06-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

*ahem*
*taps wand on counter*

<20th century Fox theme|
Done du-du-doooone.
du-da-du-da-da-done da-da-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-done du-du-doooooone.
du-da-da-Doooooooone (done du-du-done)
du-da-da-DOOOooooone (done du-du-done)
du-da-da.... du-du-du-du-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.
|20th centurey Fox theme>

Did I mention I'm DONE with finals?
I'm FINISHED with an entire year of grad school. And I survived.....
(barely)

Darth... Yoda?

2005-06-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

You scored as Yoda.

Yoda

72%

Darth Vader

72%

General Grievous

64%

C-3PO

61%

Anakin Skywalker

56%

Mace Windu

56%

Emperor Palpatine

53%

Clone Trooper

50%

Chewbacca

44%

Obi Wan Kenobi

42%

R2-D2

39%

Padme Amidala

31%

Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Notice my % score was identically 72% for both Yoda and Darth Vader.
So... how is it someone can be equally similar to Yoda and Darth Vader. And here I thought they were practically opposites.

Review of Revenge of the Sith

2005-06-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I browse hatrack.com, Orson Scott Card's website, to see if he's made any more Ender Saga books, or to check how the progress of the Ender's Game movie is going, which has been in the works, apparently, for a long time now, and still has a long time to go. While browsing the sight, I came across OSC's review of Episode III , under the "OSC reveiws everything" category.

Of the various online reviews of Episode III, I think this one has been the most enlightening. It essentially pinpoints exactly what it feels like the problem has beenw with the last three movies.

"On the first Star Wars film[s] he [George Lucas] had help. He was not yet so powerful that no one would criticize his work and help him get rid of the most embarrassing clunkers. ...
But by now he was a legend. ... there was no one left who could say to him, 'George, please, get some help on that scene, it's going to make people laugh in the theaters, and not the right way.'"

Exactly.

Better Lucky than Good

2005-06-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

So I went up to Santa Rosa during the 3-day Memorial Day weekend to be at Julia's graduation, and while I was there, among other things, I played some poker with my brothers. We were also teaching some people who had never played before how to play texas holdem, so we first did a "everyone show their cards" hand that didn't count. Then we did a "still doesn't count, but keep your cards hidden and play as you would normally" hand. Just my luck, this hand didn't count and what do I end up with?
Full house. Aces over threes. But thats not all.
Melissa had a full house, threes over aces. We both went all in at the end and I won... except it was a practice hand. I immediately predicted that thanks to that spectacular hand, I wouldn't see another good hand all night.
I hate it when I'm right. (Ok, not really, I like being right =P )
So by the end of the night I've bought in again and I'm down about 7 bucks, no biggie but kinda annoying to win, what, one hand all night I think it was.

So I have 4 chips left and Brent and Scott are still in, just the 3 of us. I've had enough of poker and wanted to go join people in the hot tub, so I decide to go all in (I know, so impressive with only 4 chips) without even looking at my down cards.
Brent calls, and we show all the cards on the table before I flip mine over. Brent has 2 pair, kings and jacks I think they were. Only way I could win would be to have a jack (3 of a kind) or 2 diamonds (flush). I flip my cards: queen of diamonds.... 4 of diamonds. WOOT.

So the next hand, this time I have 8-10 chips, with the thanks of Scott's blind from last hand. I go all in again, without looking at my cards.
This time the flopped cards were much worse, but Brent still had 2 pair, a low 2 pair.
I flip. 3 of a kind. Double+ my money again. WOOT.

Next hand I go all in again, Brent has had enough and folds, Scott stays in. Scott had 3 of a kind, I think. I don't remember quite what the exact cards were this time, possibly because I was pretty excited about having won the last two. Anyway, I forget what exactly each of us had, I think my had was less spectacular, like he had a high pair and I had two pair, but anyway, I won again.

I decided not to press my luck and quit there, seeing as I had gone from 4 chips to about 4 dollars (we were playing 10cents a chip, so 4 to 40ish) in three hands. WOOT.

It's like I always say, "Better lucky than good."

It's Official...

2005-05-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

So having not played pretty much at all for the past 2 weeks or so, I have finally officially deactivated my World of Warcraft account. I'm sure some day I'll feel like playing it again, but until then, Tralesta the night elf huntress shall go into a deep hybernation, awaiting the return of the invisible force that commands her every movement. It's funny how addictive something can be one day and how *meh* it is the next.

Speaking of addiction, I've been reading the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind and I'm pretty hooked. I never knew it was this easy to go through thousand page books in like... a few days. I'm only on book 2, but I'm having to pace myself from what I would want to do, which would be essentially... wake up, read, school, read, read, eat, read, read, hurridly do homework, read, sleep, repeat. I've also been writing more in my novel, thought it's much harder to get myself to start working on that than it is to watch TV or play Warcaft3 or read, etc. Usually once I actually start writing, though, I tend to not want to stop until I at least hit the next chapter break / section.

It's odd that I never got into reading in the past. It seems to fit pretty well with my personality. I used to read a whole lot more when I was a child, up through junior high or so. Actually, now that I think about it, the problem was that during high school I always had (usually horrid / no fun) books I was forced to read for English classes, which essentially sucked all the fun out of the idea of reading for fun.

Curses to the unintentional tainting of reading for entertainment English classes gave to me in high school. I shall put a curse unto all English classes I have ever taken; a curse on them, and their children, and their children's children...
for 2 months.

For the love of all that is holy

2005-05-23T01:40:00.000-07:00

This technical demo of the capabilities of the PS3 is a remake of the intro from FFVII (that's Final Fantasy VII, the Square-Enix RPG for the playstation that is argued to be one of the best RPGs for any platform ever made.) Yet they say they have no intention of actually remaking the game with for the PS2, even though 99% of the fans would want it enough to buy it again with new graphics.

Please, Square-Enix, PLEASE be joking. I pray that you keep dashing our hopes of seeing FFVII with shiny new graphics only becuase when you finish and release it you want it to be a huge surprise, not because you're just that cruel.

Revenge of the Sith

2005-05-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to seeing Revenge of the Sith on Friday night.
WOW!
It was GOOD!
Granted after the last two movies I had slightly lowered expectations, but I thought in pretty much every respect it was incredibly well done. By far a superior movie to the last two prequels (though that's not saying a whole lot).

By far, the most battle-intensive Star Wars movie ever, the first and last thirds of the movie are pretty much nonstop action, but not without relevence, and very well done, and this time I thought even romancish scenes were not that bad. Or at least, any element of romance only lasted a few lines and didn't have enough time to get really bad before the movie went back to action.

All in all, for any who were unsure as to whether they wanted to see the movie based on the last two, I would say it's most definitely worth seeing. I was thinking about the movie for several hours after I saw it trying to think of something that wasn't done well, and could only come up with a few minor, nitpicky things, and even those things were only slightly off, or needed slightly more explanation.

If only episodes I and II had been done as well.
/sigh.

Wow, I used to think this was good!?

2005-05-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how you can go back and read something you wrote in the past, and thought was really well done, and see how crappy it is.

This happened to me in high school, where I wrote and essay junior year I had to go back and look at, to see if I wanted to submit it as an IB paper. (International Baccalaureate, kinda like AP, but an international program). It sucked. I mean, it was HORRIBLE. I had gotten so much better at writing since then I couldn't even believe I had actually tried my best and written such worthless junk.

Not to such an extreme, but the same thing happened the other day.
A bjillion years ago (ok I think it was actually more like.... 8? 7? 9? something like that) I began writing a fantasy novel, just for kicks. I must have rewritten that thing 10 times by now, because every time I remember it, and go back to edit, I realize how crappy it is.

At this point most of it is at least quasi-decent, in my opinion anyway, all except for the first chapter, which I've been going over. It was pretty bad. It didn't flow at all. It's amazing how easy it is to write something as well as you know how to, then come back to it a year later, and see how much better it could be. It's especially amazing because it's not like I've been taking writing classes or in any other way improving my skill, yet it's still always clear how I could make it better if I give myself a good block of time not thinking about it. (Usually I obsess over it in all my free time for a month or two, then it sits in my computer banks for another year.)

I can see it now, I'm 90 years old and I remember that fantasy that I was writing and open the program and read for a bit. "Wow, how could I ever have thought this was good enough to be finished. It could be so much better..."

What if, indeed....

2005-05-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

While reading through my dailing webcomics, I came across this.

As humorous as it is, I pray to God that the dialogue in this comic doesn't surpass the actual dialogue in Star Wars III for believability.

And to think, if only someone had picked Anakin to be on their team.

Truly, I Must be a Nerd.

2005-05-11T01:10:00.000-07:00

That I find this amusing enough to post here shows just how nerdy I am. It's the kind of thing though, especially in these classes, that we all always talk about doing or wanting to do or wishing we could do.

Let me start at the beginning. I'm doing my E&M homework. Now recently our assignemnts have been about 10% physics and 90% math, as is the case with this homework. We have a point charge moving along the z axis at a relativistic velocity and need to figure out the E and B fields, by calculating their potentials. Now, essentially all this problem boils down to is doing a nasty integral for the vector potential, and plugging that into equations to get the other fields we want.

Problem is, its nasty. I mean... really nasty. Not nasty in a "this is impossible to do" way, but in a algabraic way, its just... well... very nasty.

So I get a solution for the potential. It doesn't simplify very much, or pratically at all, which suggests to me I may have (99% chance) made a / a few / a lot of mistakes. Now this equation I have would be a royal pain to plug into the equations I need to solve for, it would take forever, and it's pointless, plug-and-chug math. No physics to it.

"This equation is annoyingly complicated. I leave it as an excersize to the grader to plug this equation for A into the equations above for E and B."

We always dream of doing this on homeworks, even tests. I even know a friend who DID this on a test. "I leave it as an exersize to the grader..."
Maybe I'm a nerd, but I think its absolutely terrific: pure genius.
(Don't really need the "maybe" do I.... *shrug* ah well.)

Professors do it all the time... why can't I?
"I'll leave this as an exersize" means:
Sure I could do it if I really wanted to... but I don't. It's easy... easy and really really long and painful. You can do it at home if you want to see it's true, but I know that you won't. No one would. It's a pain. Just trust me, the answer's Pi/2.

Welcome to my world, welcome to events I find humorous. I am Kyle Stewart: Struggling Physics Grad.

"Such Nonsense..."

2005-05-05T00:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been wondering alot about my friends, and how well I really know them.
I think alot of this is caused by the fact that when you speak with an old friend, you tend to revert to the conversations you're used to, that you're comfortable with on topics that feel safe and reasurring.

The best example is when I visited Santa Rosa for a week during spring break, just recently after Katia's death. There was a lot on my mind - still is alot on my mind - but what did me and my friends talk about? Same old stuff... anime, video games, poker. Is it because I'm afraid to open up and say what I'm really feeling? No, not really. I've done that here on this blog and given those same friends the address... I've talked over AIM to such extents regarding my recent thoughts about life and death, my discouragement or encouragement in my PhD progress, or feelings that my spirituality may be waning. It's not that these topics or forbidden, but I certainly don't bring them up and neither does anyone else.

For that matter, many times it feels like conversations of relevence rarely come up in day to day life, even with those closest to you. Usually because it's such a downer to talk about what's REALLY going on in your life, the personal struggles you deal with, the philosophical questions you ask yourself. Why be so serious when you can kick back and watch a movie and go out to dinner and laugh about old times and new ones.

I think that's why I'm an AIM addict.
Even with close friends, even with my closest friends, that extra layer of separation makes it that much easier to have a serious conversation. The fact that you can word out exactly what you want to say and review it before they see it helps. The fact that you have their responses and they have yours to go over a few times and fully absorb helps. Another big part about AIM is the fact that both people can be multitasking. Long, serious conversations, althought they require a deal of concentration and thought, can go on forever, and knowing that you're not necesarrily taking hours of someone else's undivided attention also makes it easier to talk, in my opinion.

I mean, to have such a conversation in person you can't really be doing much else, can't have the conversation while watching a movie, or playing a game, ... possibly while eating dinner, but then most meals only last so long. So its much easier to just keep talking something out with someone when you can both be looking at things online, half-watching something on TV, or otherwise keeping yourself partly distracted so as to not get bogged down with the seriousness that usually accompanies conversations of relevence. And you've always got a transcript in front of you so your partial distraction doesn't let you miss anything.

Now why did I go off on this tangent of seriousness? Why not just talk about video games and anime and movies? I must be out of my mind....

The Onion

2005-05-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

Always a classic. (Edit: this used to be a link to one of TheOnion.com's articles, but has since become outdated / unlinkable)

Though my favorite The Onion article of all time, which is somewhere in the archives and unlinkable, is still the "Fun Toy Banned Because of 3 Stupid Kids' Deaths."

Truly Inspired.

2005-04-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Sega Fantasy

This is both genius and hilarious, but only for avid Final Fantasy fans.
.
.
.
.
.
and then, 20 minutes later, you realize that whoever made this had WAY too much free time on their hands. I mean to make these random flash thingies in the first place you gotta have too much free time, but its just rediculous how long this thing goes...

NOW I remember...

2005-04-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

why I don't play Warcraft III anymore (Defense of the Ancients custom game).

It's not because the game isn't well constructed and balanced, it is.
It's not because the gameplay isn't fun, it is.
It's not because it gets boring, there are a billion and a half heros to choose from.
It's not because I suck at it, I'm pretty good.
It's not because I'm TOO good at it, there are plenty better than I am.

It's not because it's impossible to actually play a full game without some loser randomly leaving the game making it uneven teams, and then we beg everyone to still stay even with 5v4 but then the next time someone dies, they decide to leave too, making it 5v3 with is essentially an automatic win for the team of 5, and it's not because this happens so frequently that I just played for about 3 hours straight without having a SINGLE game that ended with quasi-even teams and lasted all the way through the endgame.
Oh wait.... yes it is.

It's a good thing I don't have a magic device that lets me reach through the computer and strangle anyone who randomly quits for no reason or because (heaven forbid) their hero died once, hence ruining that game and 10-20 minutes of 8-9 other people's time. 'Cuz if I had that magic device, I'm fairly certain some policemen would be arresting me for multiple homicide tonight.

Curse all those players who quit. May your stomachs become bloated and your heads be plucked of all but three hairs.

Why Am I Here Again?

2005-04-19T23:46:00.000-07:00

There are times when I wonder why the hell I am in graduate school.
Now is one of those times.
In fact... every time homework is due.... is becoming one of those times.
I would much rather be... doing... idunno.. something...... else.
Getting a M.S. and running off to teach at some JC is looking more appealing all the time.

The More You Suck....

2005-04-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

... the friendlier the games become.

So on Saturday I went to the London PTQ qualifier (Magic: the Gathering tournament) in Costa Mesa, not because I thought I'd do very well, but just to have fun and get to hang out with Ian a bit, who I haven't really seen (other than watching Sin City together a week ago) in awhile. Now this is a REAL tournament, not the little neighborhood things I'm more accustomed to playing, so the air is somewhat different. There's alot more pressure since everyone is taking it way more seriously, and you spend way more time making sure you don't make ANY mistakes, and think through your strategy like a hundred times before you do anything.

It's fun to have more hardcore games like this. For example, one of the greatest moments of that tourney was when I won with exactly 1 life left. Opponent kept swinging for flying damage I couldn't stop and I kept swinging over to hit him in return. Finally it got to the point where he attacked and I had 1 life left and he had only 1 blocker (because I only had 2 creatures to attack with, totalling 6 damage, and he had 7 life.) So I played the "perfect card to have right now" that killed his blocker and did 1 damage to him and attacked and BOOM - won with 1 life left.

Nevertheless, after 4 rounds I was 2-2, so there was no chance of actually winning much. On this 5th round, the atmosphere of the game completely changed. I couldn't really win. Neither could my opponent. So we were making jokes, goofing around, and just generally being nice. We didn't really think things through as much as we would have earlier, cuz our brains were tired from focusing so much. Things like:

Him: I'll attack with this big guy with this equipment on him.
Me: I'll block with all these guys this time.
Him: Um.. ok.. they all die and he lives...
Me: Oh wait, thats what that thing does? We'll that was pretty stupid then.
Him: You still wanna block?
Me: On second thought... nope. *chuckle*

Not even a chance things like this, things like "you just made a game losing stupid mistake, you wanna take it back?" are allowed in previous rounds. Even though they weren't the most tactically challenging and intricate games, they were probably the funnest.

Yup, the more you suck at a game, the more fun you have with it, generally speaking.
Or rather, when theres less on the line, the more fun you have, whether you're good at it or not.

Group Effort

2005-04-13T00:43:00.000-07:00

I'd like to think I know enough physics in each of my respective classes that I can do the homeworks by myself, if I were to put in the time and effort needed and didn't procrastinate so much. I would also like to think, that if I concentrated REALLY hard, I could emit some kind of magical energy pulse from my palm that could eradicate my enemies. Alas, it is not so.

Undergraduate physics was largly a solo effort, with ocassional groups of 2-3 of us working together because, as it turns out, its much harder to procrastinate sitting a a table that does NOT have a computer on it with several of your friends, at least one of which actually wants to get the work done.

Graduate classes, on the other hand, are a group effort. Between the, what ... 6-8 of us who work together, one of us is bound to have had the necesarry epiphany on that problem that is badly worded in the book, never explained in class, and uses techniques that, although they have been thought up before, we may as well be deriving for ourselves.

The night consisted of the following:
(Fun minigame: try and count how many Erics)
Eric comes over: "You know how to do Stat.Mech. homework?"
Me: "We'll I did the first two. Either they're easy, or I did them wrong. I probably did them wrong. Did you do E&M?"
Eric: "I think I know how to do #1, and 2a)."
Me: "Sweet!"
*work for a bit*
Eric joins us: "Why are you doing Stat.Mech? It's not due til 4pm tomorrow."
*change to working on E&M*
*Eric gets back from teaching*
Me: "You know how to do Quantum?"
Eric: "I'm not taking that class."
Me: "..... and?"
*Eric looks at our assignment and enjoys our misery*
*work for abit*
Me: "How do you do the rest of E&M?"
Eric: "Hung was going to come over to my place and show us."
*Eric's place*
Us: "How the hell do you do E&M?"
*Hung shows us how to do E&M*
Someone: "What about the 3rd stat mech problem?"
Everyone else: "No idea where to even start."
Me: "How the hell you do quantum?"
Eric: *shrug* "Let's go see if Erin figured it out."
Us: "How you do quantum?"
Erin: "How you do stat mech?"
*work for abit*
Us: "Did you finish stat mech?"
Erin: "Don't know where to start on the 3rd one."
Us: "Yeah, no one does."

And thus concludes my night of homework.
(There were 3 Erics. If you guessed correctly, you win 1/64000 of an airship.......... ok not really.)
E&M: "complete" but probably certainly wrong about... half the time.
QM: "complete" but CERTAINLY wrong... half the time.
StatMech: 4/6 problems compelted, probably correctly. I shall leave the remaining problems as an excersice for the grader.

Classes I'm taking: 3.
Classes with homework due on wednesdays: 3.
Tuesdays suck.

Thinking of Katia...

2005-04-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

Today I went up to LA to the Arclight to see Sin City in beautiful digital quality with Ian, and afterwards I stopped by UCLA to briefly spend some time with Tania before heading home.

It was odd, being at UCLA again. It's difficult to describe.
The place is full of so many memories, of the friends I had there, activities we did together (or rather, recalling the times there was nothing to do and we simply wandered Westwood.) Walking around Westwood while waiting for our table to be ready at the Olive Garden, even being in the restaurant itself, all reminiscent of times a UCLA. And yet, of the many memories I could choose from while briefly strolling through the area, there were some in particular that seemed to come to the surface more readily than others.

I found myself thinking of Katia.
Or rather, of all the memories that come popping to the surface, most of which included "the gang," doing some such activity, whether it be weekly dinners at BJs, the time we went to Olive Garden for Karen's birthday, the time we all walked to DeeDee Reise the very first week we were there and were just getting to know each other, the time this, the time that. But now in all those memories Katia seems to rise to the surface of the memory.

It's human nature to want what we can't have. It seems then, also in our nature to take for granted what we still do have. If another close friend were to be lost forever, would all my memories that involve them suddenly be "about" them, I wonder? It's hard to tell, now that I think about it, whether those memories have become focused on Katia since her death, or is it due to the fact that during the first few years at UCLA I was either secretly (or not so secretly) attracted to Katia or in a relationship with her. Many of those times I recall I was giving her more than an even share of my attention based on this, and so I remember her more clearly during those group events than I would the others.

Having attended her funeral and spoken and comforted friends regarding her death (and of course, been comforted myself by those friends) there are other things I have picked up on that I had not had chance (thank God, as my only chance would be to have a close friend die) to notice before - the way people speak of the deceased, always with praise of course, but often with slightly higher praise than is deserving. The deceased become idealized, more so than I felt comfortable with. It (due to contrast, not similarity) made me think of the Ender's Game series, of speaking for the dead.

(for those not familiar, a Speaker for the Dead would hold the equivalent of a funeral service, but would speak the life of the deceased in a completely neutral way, neither praising, nor slandering the deceased. They would point out the deceased person's accomplishments, his goals in life, his flaws, his fears, etc.)

The problem with Speaking for the Dead, is the inherent difficulty in knowing everything about a person to such an extent as to be able to speak their life plainly and accuratly, without relying on assumptions and presumptions some of which are bound to be false. Or, as my favorite quote from the same series states:
"I don't know anybody, and nobody knows me. We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we 'understand.' Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then."
So how could you know enough about another to speak for them after their death?

I, obviously, have nothing even remotely reaching understanding of who Katia really was, what she really believed in, what she feared... essentially what "went on" inside her mind/soul/being. Nevertheless, I find it somewhat necesarry to write down, even if only to myself, how I understood Katia.

She was a romantic at heart, that much was obvious. She longed for her love story to come true and to find her soul mate, which never happened.
Many things about her have been stated more times than I can remember recently: she was brilliant, excelled instudies, and had a wide range of interest including debating philosophy, history and literature.
She also had an easily obsessive personality, just as I do. Once hooked on soemthing (Alias is a good example) she would obsess about it, speculating plotlines, writing fanfics, making wallpapers for her computer, ...
She had a wonderfully dark sense of humor. She loved the video game Alice (demented version of Alice in Wonderland) more than I did, and she introduced us to the Happy Tree Friends (http://www.happytreefriends.com )

But she was also sometimes quick to judge and slow to forgive. Sometimes she would look too harshly at someone's actions that mirrored mistakes she herself had made in the past. There was a great deal of drama between us in the past few years regarding our past relationship and its possible resurgance, the details of which are inconsequential. I, in a lapse of judgement, compromised our friendship, repented for my actions and asked for forgiveness, and I'm not sure I ever truly received it.

Every person has flaws and every person makes mistakes. I have always considered my friends as forgivable for almost any offense, for who am I to judge others for their mistakes, when I am just as flawed as they.

She could also be manipulative. Sometimes in a charming way, like convincing you to go watch a movie when you should be studying, or go on a long walk when you really didn't feel like it when she had one of her patented "random bursts of energy" at 3am. Sometimes her manipulations were not so friendly, just a sly and sublte way to get what she wants without a direct confrontation.

But again, minor flaws are engrained in us all - no one is perfect. She loved her friends dearly (as anyone close to her could attest) and we all loved her. She was more willing than most to accept new friends into our social circle, such was her generous spirit.

Some of what I've said may be true, most certainly aspects of it are false. I am only a man trying to describe what I understood to be my friend, but in the end no one can say who Katia truly was. No person can be boiled down to a list of their attributes - weaknesses and strengths, fears and goals. The only truly accurate thing I can say about Katia is that she was Katia.

After a certain time ("The Drama" as I have come to call it) the friendship between Katia and myself never really returned to what it once was, probably due in part to a fear of being hurt by the other on both our parts. While the relation between us I would still call frienship, it came to become (at least in my eyes) a friendship of convenience, of proximity. After graduation, I had made myself ready for the distinct possibility of never seeing or hearing from her again. Never is probably too harsh a word for what was probable, nevertheless it was what I prepared myself for.
Nevertheless, despite the fact I hadn't seen her for months and was prepared for the possiblity that she would phase out of my life forever in the coming years, now that she is gone, I will miss her dearly, and find myself thinking of her often, always reminiscing with myself about the good times we'd had.

Being the musically minded person that I am, at least once a day I have a song from Phantom of the Opera or Moulin Rouge in my head, both of which now distinctly remind me of Katia. On that note, here Katia, is my tribute to you - the alterations I find myself making when singing along to phantom. This song in particular will always, always remind me of you.

I'll think of you, think of you fondly, now we've said goodbye.
I'll remember you, once in a while, I promise you I'll try.
Once we found that once again we longed to take our hearts back and be free,
But I promise I'll remember
Stop and think of you.
Think of all the things we've shared and seen,
Won't think about the things which might have been.
...
I'll recall those days, look back on all those time,
Think of the things we'd always do.
There will never be a day when I won't think of you.

Sin City

2005-04-03T01:09:00.000-08:00

I went and saw Sin City the other day. I don't like to discuss the plots in movies that don't suck, so I won't, so anyone who doesn't like movies ruined can go ahead and read this anyway.

Whenever someone asks me how the movie was, I always seem obligated to pause a moment and, almost as a disclaimer, mention that the movie is incredibly disturbing, and is packed full of violence, nudity, and all things rated R, which are things I usually try to avoid in movies. Having said that... the movie was very well done. I thought it did an excellent job in establishing the mood and overall atmosphere. It also had lots of action scenes, chases, exploding things, etc, that the audience of 5 minute attention spans like to oogle over, while at the same time having intricate and subtlties to the plot that deep thinkers like to ponder over. There was also, of course, the everlasting "black and white, except for some things which are in bright colors" effect which I thought was done well and looked really cool.

Of course my favorite thing about the movie in general is something I've come to enjoy while watching 24..... watching a badass character... be badass...

He is Risen.

2005-03-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone had a happy Easter. I did, spent some time at the Holmlunds'. It's amazing how much better home cooked food is than frozen pizza and hot pockets.

Figures

2005-03-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Why is it you can go over a problem looking for mistakes for an hour straight during a test, but the moment you step outside you suddenly realize what you did wrong and how to fix it.
Curse Murphey AND his law!

There are no words...

2005-03-23T01:05:00.000-08:00

RIP Katia Emily Newman

September 13, 1982 - March 21 2005

Never in a million years did I see this coming. She was driving to work, for one reason or another lost control of the car and crashed into some rocks over the embankment near the road and died.

She was only 22, since when do you worry about your friends dying, not being able to see them or hear their voice again when they're only 22.

Dead...
It doesn't compute.
It's been 2 days and it still doesn't compute.
All the silly pointless drama between us in the past year or two, either upfront of underneath the surface, seems just that, silly... pointless... trivial.
She's gone.
Just when I think it's sunk in and I try to get on with everyday activities, like studying for finals tomorrow (oh yea finals tomorrow, which I'm so not ready for, but I could care less at the moment) everything seems normal. But then it hits me again.
She's dead, gone, forever.

She was a young, intelligent, hardworking, caring person who had her life tragically cut short. Why should she die when the rest of us get to live? What so wonderful about the rest of us that we should live and she should die? Nothing.

Random act of devistation.
That's what Dad called it when Mom got cancer.
Random act of devistation.

Her funeral is on Friday.
God, that makes it sound so real...
Funeral.
Funeral where we'll bury her remains because she's gone.
I still can't believe she's gone.
I wish I had the chance to speak with her one last time, a chance to say goodbye... but wishing doesn't make it so.

Rest in peace Katia,
We will never forget you.
We all miss you already.
We all love you.

First post

2005-03-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

Dunno how long this will last until I get bored, but here we go, post #1. woot.