On this page
| 1 April 2008 | Spring Break | |
| 25 April 2008 | Transverse Laser Modes | |
| 13 May 2008 | Townhouse! | |
| 12 June 2008 | Book | |
| 21 June 2008 | Paying for a Service You Never Asked For: Awesome! | |
| 15 July 2008 | Stormstack | |
| 17 July 2008 | Photo Reorganization | |
| 21 July 2008 | The Surface of Graphite | |
| 15 August 2008 | Breaking Into Cars | |
| 23 November 2008 | Fall 2008 | |
| 29 December 2008 | Cortex Reaver | |
| 13 January 2009 | COLD | |
| 30 January 2009 | Teeth Knocked Out | |
| 9 February 2009 | Zeta Function Regularization | |
| 18 March 2009 | Comps Talk | |
| 24 March 2009 | Photons Playing Soccer! |
Spring Break
Winter term concluded nicely: solid work through 9th and 10th week, then caught a ride with Anna out to Madison for a couple weeks with Justin & company. Finished up my finals and emailed them in from WI--everything was either a paper or take-home, so I was able to take my time, put in my best work on everything, and turn them in without a 4 hour drive. So, spring break felt like 3 weeks, which was a really nice change. I needed the space to decompress, get to know myself again.
I'm taking up the guitar again: bought an old Suzuki from a guy in Madison through Craigslist, which sounds pretty good. Deeply resonant sound, bit of a buzz (in the tuner?) on the open G string, but otherwise plays nicely. I ran into Dirk's Guitar Page, which pleasantly has many of the same pieces I played as a kid: Carcassi, Sor, Paganini. Progress has been surprisingly fast, but I'm a long way from playing well.
Carrie, Justin, Jenny, Bobby, and I all trekked down to Florida for Spring Break; my first independent vacation! It was really nice to spend the time with friends; screaming through the Tower of Terror at Disney World, swimming and hanging out with new friends from Ohio State at the beach, learning to play tennis, and just relaxing on the beach. I do regret not reading more of Quantum State Diffusion, but that's a small complaint.
I attended my first church service in a long time: communion at Unity church, a very open Christian community. Some of the books in their bookstore were a little laughable (crystal healing, for example), but I found many aspects of their faith beautiful. "Namaste", meaning "the spirit within me recognizes the spirit within you." It's a nice thing to remember, I think, because it is a statement one can make regardless of the acts or character of one's partner. No matter who you are or what you have done, we share a common part in humanity, and that much can always be honored. That brings up a question of the separability of humanity from character, but... maybe I'll talk about that later.
I came back to photography again, and the six photographs posted today are the product of that. I'm not entirely sure about the new direction in color; part of me feels like I'm aiming for bold, abstract statements that may be overreaching the original view, but I've also tried to remain true to my experience. Justin took me on a tour of the Wisconsin State Capitol, which started by walking with my eyes closed along the long northwest corridor to the central dome; when I looked up and opened them for the first time, this view of the dome's interior burst into view. It's hard to capture the overwhelming scale and dynamic range in the interior here; I've settled for a crisp dark/light contrast to retain the sunlight detail without introducing noise, but some parts don't feel right at all; for example, the central ceiling is almost totally black, instead of being well illuminated. That's partly a factor of dynamic range, but also of available light: handheld, all the longer exposures I took were too blurry for use.
Images like In the Gallery on the Third Floor are more natural, and reflect the vivid sunset colors without being overpowering. I think that's the direction I'll try to take more in the future. Please, enjoy.
Anyway, only 2 days in to the new term, and lots of work to do! More to follow, I hope.
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Transverse Laser Modes
These are pictures of various transverse electromagnetic modes for the laser we're working with.
Laser beams aren't constrained to being nice little smooth dots, though that's one of the possible modes (TEM00). Since TEM00 has the most tightly focused beam, and the fewest irregularities, it's the one many laser manufacturers force their device to operate at. There are other possible solutions, with varying patterns. The subscripts here indicate the number of divisions in the beam—I'm guessing on some of the higher ones. There's also a strange pattern which looks like it has radial, not rectilinear, divisions; I'm not sure what that is, exactly.
TEM00
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TEM01
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TEM02
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TEM11
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TEM22
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TEM23
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TEM33?
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TEM35?
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Radial mode?
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These pictures are taken by projecting the beam through an enlarging lens onto a whiteboard. Kind of a hack, but it works surprisingly well. Images are enhanced to show contrast; in reality, they're just red.
Townhouse!
So, life continues insanely unabated. This week in lab we're a.) measuring the speed of light, and b.) weighing the galaxy, which means we get to spend time on the roof playing with the radio telescope! Gave the talk on pi0 photoproduction, which Nelson says went pretty well. Pre-2nd kyu test is coming up next Wednesday. Still working on The Book, which is rapidly acquiring more capital letters.
Anyway, the awesome news is that I drew Scott 300, a townhouse apartment! Reid, Josh, Laura, and Jennifer will be rounding out our amazing house. Should be a terrific year!
Book
Over the past 10 weeks, I made a book, entitled Sampling Error: Stochastic Perturbations to Reality. It explores the relationship between measurement in the physical sciences and photography as an act of measurement. I designed the layout in Scribus, an open source desktop publishing tool, worked with a local print shop to have the photographs printed, cut woodcuts and set type, then folded, bound, and cased six copies. They're finally done, and being distributed to friends and family.
I'm really happy.
Paying for a Service You Never Asked For: Awesome!
So, I just got a cell phone for the first time. I held out for 6 years; almost unheard of for an IT guy and student. Ended up with a little Samsung slider phone, the t429, which I'm growing to like: it's small, lightweight, has easy-to-feel buttons, and a large screen. I do have one complaint, however.
I don't really need text messaging. I have email and IM already, and both are more convenient for actually writing something down. However, people my age are obsessed with it. I got a text within 2 hours of getting the phone out of the box, and made the unpleasant discovery that receiving a 36-byte message cost me fifteen cents! Fifteen cents for something I didn't even ask for! If I had a chance to reject it, as you can with calls, that'd be fine, but apparently that's not an option. You just pay whenever someone else decides to send one to you.
I talked to my friends, who said their providers let you opt out of receiving text messages; great, since it's a service I didn't sign up for or want in the first place. However, T-Mobile doesn't let you opt-out, claiming their software isn't smart enough to do that. I can block texts sent as email, which I guess is a big problem thanks to advertising, but I can't keep my friends from costing me money by accident. The network obviously knows what kind of plan I have, as it bills me for service instantly. Why can't it also check to see if I don't want the messages in the first place?
So, now I'm stuck paying an extra $5 a month for 400 texts. I guess I'll use some of them, now that they're there, but it's still poor service to not give your customers the choice. T-Mobile, you make me a sad panda.
Update (July 16 2008): On a family plan, you can't get the $5/mo package: you need to buy the family pack, which nobody else in my family needs. That's $15 a month--more than my line in the first place!
Update (July 24 2008): Hey, looks like T-Mobile's facing a lawsuit for this!
Update (July 28 2008): T-Mobile promised they'd block texts for me. I continue to receive them. I've also been told I won't be charged if I don't open texts. This is also not true. I've also been charged for 13 outgoing texts, which I'm pretty sure I didn't send, as I've never composed a message. Grr.
Stormstack
I really don't know how to explain this one. I walked out of the restaurant, took one look at the sky, and sprinted to the van to grab my camera. Two hours of thunderstorms and a tornado system moving up from the southwest left the sky churning with clouds, at times pale gold, at others a vicious burning orange. I spent the next 45 minutes running through Superior, past scrap yards, bar parking lots, and through the massive granary complex on Dock Street. Each photo just kind of led to the next in an adrenaline-fueled rush; I couldn't believe how lucky I was to witness a storm system like this move overhead at sunset.
I don't know how to handle the color correction for these images: Stormstack is basically a flat white-balance with the saturation brought down, and it's still a little too orange. All I can tell you is that yes, the sky did look like that. I've never seen anything like it in my life.
Photo Reorganization
I reorganized the photographs according to EXIF dates, where available. This should clear up the fact that I tend to go back in my archives and publish things months or years after they were taken. I'm not sure what to do about new material yet; I may let the front page see recently updated photographs, but put old photos in their temporal context, or leave them at the top of the stack for a few days then let them slide back.
The Surface of Graphite
For the last lab of the term, we learned how to use the scanning tunneling electron microscope, or STM.
This is an image of the surface of a flake of graphite--the same stuff pencil lead is made out of. We take a small block of graphite and peel off layers using Scotch tape, then mount them on the bed of the STM. An extraordinarily sharp needle, with a tip only a few atoms thick, is given a small electric charge, and positioned a few angstroms above the sample. Electrons then tunnel across the gap between the needle and the surface at a small rate, yielding a current. We sweep the needle across the surface using piezo crystals, and measure the height/current data at each point. That data yields an image, which we've filtered with an FFT to show the structure more clearly.
The regular hexagonal arrangement of the graphite sheets is clearly visible, but it turns out that this image is not of individual atoms. The atoms in a graphite layer form open hexagons, but this image doesn't show the holes! In fact, the scale is off entirely: the peak-to-peak distance in this image is about .26 nanometers, but the distance between atoms is actually 0.142 nanometers. What this image shows is the distribution of electron cloud probabilities, which, thanks to the underlying hexagonal structure, does show perfect triangular tessellation.
Breaking Into Cars
Carrie (one of my summer housemates) locked herself out of her car earlier this week. She gave Justin and I a call, asking us to contact a local locksmith. Rather than go to the expense of calling a locksmith after hours, we offered to try to break in first.
I'd never tried, or really thought about, breaking into a car before. I don't drive my car very often, and I don't tend to leave my keys behind, so it had never really occurred to me that I might need to know how, but here was a chance to find out. We stopped by the house, picked up a wire coat hanger and a pair of wire cutters, and drove out to the store she had parked in front of. "Thank goodness you're here," she exclaimed, and showed us her key-containing purse, neatly tucked away on the back seat.
I unbent the coat hanger and snipped off the twisted end. The door locks were the pull-type, small vertical posts that, in their locked state, remained safely recessed within the door body. There was no chance of extracting them from above, barring the use of strong adhesives, but I imagined that it might be possible to catch whatever locking mechanism connected those posts to the door lock by inserting a hooked wire into the door body at the midline window seal. Then Carrie offered that she had power locks.
"Oh!" We stood up to examine the door body from the top of the passenger-side window. Indeed, a three-way rocker button was situated, out of passing view, in the door's armrest. Even better, the button faced up--it would only be necessary to depress it to open the lock. I inserted the coat hanger into the weatherstripping at the top of the door, where it met the metal just above the window. It slid easily through and down to the seat, but I couldn't direct it back towards the door frame. Removing the wire and making a quick bend rectified that situation, and I pressed the button easily.
All in all, the process took about 3 minutes and caused no visible damage. Now that I know what to do and where to look, I could unlock a similar vehicle in perhaps as little as 15 seconds. Whoah! I always thought it would take a lot of time to break into a car--at least five minutes--so somebody would notice what you were doing. Or if you did it fast, you'd need to break a window or do something else noticeably violent. Yet this was fast, easy, and nobody asked us any questions. It would be harder to steal a bicycle. Suffice it to say, I'm not trusting my valuables to any car that might be a target from now on.
With that experience in mind, here's what I plan to look for (or modify) when I buy a new car. (If you are a car designer, please take note!)
Doors
- I haven't tested any other vehicles, but some cars may not let you insert a coat hanger through the door at all. Try the weatherstripping at the glass, at the metal, and at the door gap.
Physical locking mechanisms
- Physical locks should offer as little mechanical purchase as possible. The post-type is hard to open with this method because it is smooth and has no corners to pull on.
- Locks should take some force to open. It's hard to apply a lot of force through a wire, except when pulling forward or upward.
- If the lock offers something to pull on, it should not pull up or forward. In to and away from the door are the hardest directions to manipulate with something going through the weatherstripping.
- A physical lock should be hard to see from outside the vehicle. That makes it more difficult to aim attempts to open it.
Power locks
- If the vehicle has power locks, under no circumstances should they offer buttons that press down! Pushing in towards the door or pulling out towards the chair is probably the safest.
- If there are buttons, they most definitely should not be concave! This particular switch had a convex lock and a concave unlock surface: merely touching the lock directs the wire right on target. A convex surface is harder to press, but likely not impossible.
Of course, no vehicle is immune to lock-picking or POWS (plain-old-window-smashing), so your best bet is always to bring your valuable items with you, and keep any existing items hidden. If your car isn't as much of a target, it dramatically enhances the ability of your security measures to do their job. :-)
Stay safe!
Fall 2008
Term's almost over; one final left. Research reached a nice finishing point this week; I finished the comparative Lyapunov analysis and prepared the graphs for submission. Noise really kills the linearity we're looking for, but it does suggest an experimentalist will see some unexpected things, which is what the original paper tried to show with power spectra--and moreover, the figures are in the right ballpark for More on that when we draft a response to PRL.
Tested for 2nd kyu this week. It was tough--especially remembering the right vs. left distinctions for techniques that sound very similar in Japanese! Mechanically things felt pretty solid, though, which was nice. I was even able to clear 3 feet on jumping-over-partner, which was a great feeling. Plus, the front strike continuation is just plain awesome.
Other than that, planning a second book, which will explore the various off-limits parts of Carleton, getting ready for Comps, and starting the post-graduation job search. Now, back to that last paper!
Cortex Reaver
I've migrated Aphyr.com off its old, dying hardware onto a spiffy new Linode. So far it's going pretty well! My new blog engine, Cortex Reaver is also up and running.
Currently waiting for my flight to depart from PDX. The 15 inches of snow Nature dropped on us this week meant long waits for most people, but I was able to get through ticketing and security in about half an hour, and the MAX got me here just fine (though we passed a couple jacknifed semis on the way). Now all I have to do is make my connection through SeaTac in an hour. That... could be interesting.
COLD
-25 degrees absolute, -50 with windchill.
Okay, even I am prepared to declare that it is now cold outside... Laura and I tried to go to Stadium this morning, and my eyelids started freezing. AWESOME!
Teeth Knocked Out
A stick to the face in broomball took out three of my top incisors and broke one of the bottom ones as well. I spent a couple hours in surgery last week to stabilize and reimplant some of the damaged teeth, and just went back in yesterday morning to have the shattered roots--and the third avulsed tooth--extracted. Next week is a root canal for the bottom tooth, followed by a crown. Hopefully I'll start the procedure for implants pretty soon--depending on whether I need a bone graft, I may be basically back to normal in a few months.
Not really much pain, I'm just a little inconvenienced by having to eat slower, and my lips are kind of torn up but healing rapidly. Hopefully I can get back to full activities soon!
Zeta Function Regularization
In a discussion tangent to our research, Arik just managed to explain the mechanics of Zeta-function regularization in the Casimir effect in a (mathematically) action-packed half hour. This conversation cleared up two days of confused scribbling--because now I accept that infinity is, in fact, equal to -1/3.
I'm dreaming math again. I had the weirdest semi-conscious dreams about water slides and renormalization theory. When my first draft goes in, I am going to enjoy taking the weekend off. Two weeks left!
Comps Talk
Well, I gave my comps talk (senior thesis) on the Casimir effect last week. It went surprisingly well, though it took much longer to prepare a 70 minute lecture than I expected. There are few graphics on the web which really explain the effect in a sensible way, so I had to draw most of them myself. The audience even seemed to follow quite a bit of it—impressive for starting from ground zero and moving rapidly to quantum cavity electrodynamics.
When I went in to meet with my faculty advisor the next day, I was surprised to learn that the reason he had not kept any of our meetings, or indeed showed much interest in discussing my comps at all, was because he had somehow not realized that he even was my advisor! Apparently, when I finished the talk and he saw his name on the final slide, he was very startled and realized his mistake. I am somewhat disappointed by this, but on the other hand, it was nice to get away without significant critique.
All in all, he said it was a very nice talk, so I'm happy with it--even though I did place a-dagger instead of a on my vacuum cleaner. :) There are still two drafts remaining, but somehow this feels like the finishing point of comps.
Photons Playing Soccer!
Stretching a visual metaphor from my comps presentation entirely too far, here's some cute little photons playing soccer (with a buckyball) on the electromagnetic field.
