Monthly Archives: November 2005

Laser is Better

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I was walking down the hall listening to my inkjet printer cranking away, and a peculiar thought struck me. LASERs are astounding (LASER = Light Amplification Of Stimulated Emission Of Radiation, I looked it up, didn’t memorize it). Really. Think about this for a moment.

Think inkjet printers are good? (Yeah, compared with dot matrix.) Hey! Laser printers are better, faster, sharper.
Think optical mice are good? (Yeah, compared with analog ball mice.) Hey! Laser mice are better, more precise.
Think contact lenses are good? (Compare with glasses.) Lasik is more comfortable.
Cutting tools and knives. Lasers are better.
Pointing sticks and meter sticks. Lasers are better.
Rulers and measuring tape. Lasers are better.
Fabricating small stuff. Lasers are good. (Chemicals might be better, but I think lasers are still required in the process.)
Measuring the speed of light. Lasers are better.

These are just things from the top of my head -> I’m sure there are more examples. What do you think?

[By the way, I would like a laser mouse for Christmas ;) ]

Robots, Math, phpBB Star, MP3 Shack, Pete, Ishwar, Essays

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[MM] I woke this morning in time to finish my Calculus homework before going to EE 106 to work with Michael O. on our robot. We’re supposed to make it run through an obstacle course, but the IR detectors see too far. We need to somehow make it more nearsighted. Otherwise, we can’t detect small gaps in walls. Perhaps there’s a bug in our code: thinking back on it, the sensors seemed to be more sensitive before. Yet there was always a problem with close accuracy. I brought the robot back to the dorm to work on; let’s hope we do before the last class session (Thursday).

Math discussion as usual. We went over some homework questions and then he started working out a sample final. It looks like it’s going to be really tough, yet still doable. When I got back from that, I worked some on phpBB Star, resetting the Support forum and reorganizing things. I also uploaded a new language and a couple new templates. Then I worked on MP3 Shack, which is getting surprisingly popular (and increasingly so). I’ve been making many hacks in the script because though it’s a paid script, it’s not very well-written, surprisingly. Even I can make huge improvements.

Then I went to this “USC vs. UCLA rivalry” speaker event and saw Pete Carroll, as I posted earlier. He spoke for us for awhile, then went out of the room to do an interview with a radio talk show, 1540 AM I think it was. I stood there to look at him and listen :) along with many other people.

It was Ishwar’s 18th birthday! He’s from NY, so no driver’s license. Interesting person to talk with; we were at EVK at about 9:45 PM just sitting and talking.

And now I’ve got two essays to write for tomorrow. I feel like I’ve forgotten something major. It’s a good thing I’m doing these Midnight Messages, or else I’d never remember anything I did.

Enable Sending Referrers

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I created a new installation of WordPress on MP3 Shack.us, and got this error:

Sorry, you need to enable sending referrers for this feature to work.

If you get this error, try turning off Symantec Client Firewall, if you have it:

1. Doubleclick on the globe in the system tray 2. Click on Privacy Control 3. Click on Configure 4. Click on Custom Level 5. Remove the check next to ‘Enable Browser Privacy’ 6. Click OK

Alternatively, edit wp-admin/admin-functions.php and remove these three lines:

$adminurl = strtolower( get_settings(‘siteurl’) ) . ‘/wp-admin’;
$referer = strtolower( $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] );
if ( !strstr($referer, $adminurl) )
die(__(‘Sorry, you need to enable sending referrers for this feature to work.’));

Note that this may reduce security.

Pete Carroll in Person

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I saw Pete Carroll today in Heritage Hall. I was close enough that I could have reached out and touched him. He’s something of a celebrity these days, so I thought I’d mention it :)

This was soon after the event called “USC vs. UCLA: Tales from the greatest rivalry in sports”. They talked about sports careers and journalism, and some of their favorite aspects of the rivalry. It’s unique, fun, and is unmatched in sheer intensity. Something they alluded to: what’s the history of the Coliseum?

Pool, Bible Study, Web Development

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In this edition of the Midnight Message™, I’ll be writing a few sentences about a very exciting day. It has really been packed, but I don’t want this to run too long. First, I went to sleep at about 4 AM (looks like that might happen again tonight), waking at about 9 AM for 5 hours of sleep (my goal is at least 6). Then I had my last Core 111 class session. It was fun: we presented our “creative” A7 projects (mine is this – hopefully I’m allowed to post the link, it’s a static page). Then I went to Parkside for lunch before my Math 126 lecture. Only two left now. We completed professor evaluations for Prof. Honda at the end of class today. It’s both depressing and exciting that there’s only one week of classes left. It has gone by so fast, it will be strange when it’s over. 15 weeks.

Core 102 was as usual, and then I wasted a little time on the computer before going to a Math SI session with Zenzi. It was helpful, but it made me late for Deans’ Dinner (the first time I tried to go, but the rear door was locked). I went through the normal EVK entrance and went into the “special event” room anyway, and talked with Natasha, Mo, and then Jason M. Then I played Pool (for the first time here) with Mo and a girl named Cheng Yee. I won, unfortunately. But it was really awesome. I like pool. It’s another sport at which I can excel.

Back upstairs in Marks Hall, I talked with Kipp, Art, J.Lo, and a student named Nick who lived in Marks last year (currently a junior). Kipp was ‘baking’ cookies (from raw cookie dough) in his microwave on a paper plate. He tried running it under the lowest setting, 1, for a long time. The cookie came out looking done, but it wasn’t too successful: he said it didn’t taste all that great. Then I went to the last Marks Hall Bible Study of the year, where we reviewed all of the passages we’d studied for the past 14 weeks. Very insightful. Then we went on our last Boba trip (to Cup O’ Joy). I had small milk tea with egg pudding! Yeah, I tried something new. It was good: like custard.

We stayed there talking longer than usual. J.Lo got popcorn chicken #5 (incredibly hot), but Janice ordered a popcorn chicken #0 (now that’s good stuff). She shared it with me: I estimate eating about 45% of the order, and it was more than enough. Back at USC again, we talked for a long time about school, Christianity, and — get this — website development (with Janice). Finally someone who knows the difference between tables (vs frames) and div layers, XHTML and CSS. Awesome! We’ll have to talk again and work together sometime in the future. Eventually we headed to Mike’s room (next to mine) where we played Disney Princess games. It was funny. I’m Belle, along with Christie and J.Lo.

During all this time, my roommate, Kedar, has been sleeping. In fact, he’s been sleeping all day. Though I don’t blame him: he didn’t sleep at all last night. But what’s strange is that he sets his alarm. It goes off, and he ignores it until I yell at him, at which point he just turns the alarm off and goes back to sleep. Anyway, now I’ve got a week’s worth of Calculus homework to do in one evening. Argh.. ‘homework’ has a way of messing things up :)

Media: Wall Street Journal

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I’ve been mentioned in an article published by the Wall Street Journal:

In May last year, teenager Elliot Lee confided on his blog, “what’s really struck me this school year is my lack of friends.” His mother, Katy Lee, read the posting and tried to ease any stress she was placing on Elliot, now 17, about his school work. By reading her son’s blog every few days, “I gain insight into what matters to him,” says Ms. Lee, 46, a real-estate agent in Walnut, Calif. “It has opened doors to talking more together.”

I don’t like the quote, but hey, I’m there nonetheless. More quotes of interest from the article:

About 20% of U.S. Internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 have a blog — about four million U.S. teenagers, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a Washington-based nonprofit that researches the impact of the Internet. Many are confiding their feelings and intimate details of their lives — and sometimes posting revealing photographs — to the personal Web sites offered by free services such as MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal and Multiply.
…
Like cellphone conversations or classroom chatter, teen blogs, with their high doses of misspellings, racy content, and age-appropriate angst, can be inane, earnest or rambling. A 16-year-old blogger’s 2:15 a.m. post, replete with insider shorthand, is typical of the mundane nature of many blogs: “totally lyk slept all day…haha woww…im totally wide awake and bored now…mayb ill do summore h/w [homework]?? mayb not??”

Post a comment if you have any opinions about these snippets.

Church and Thinking

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Aaron (12:19:38 AM): midnight message =)

I think that’s a good enough introduction. Today I woke up to go to church, it being Sunday. Though the message I’m sure was good, I must admit to falling nearly asleep, such that I don’t remember much of what was said. I do feel better for having heard it, though it’s probably hiding somewhere in my subconscious. Sunday school was interesting. Supposedly we were to talk about the stories of our lives, which is strangely relevant because I’m currently writing the story of a character’s life in a book that I read for Core 102 (for my writing class). Hopefully I’ll be able to pull off an intriguing “interpretive lens,” as we’re supposed to do.

Anyway, I saw my life plotted on a piece of paper in front of me and it looked strange just sitting there. I think what was particularly striking was not the final product, but how it got there. Because I didn’t fill it in chronologically. I went nearly reverse chronologically, but there were things I couldn’t remember until they were connected with other things. For example, I can’t remember friends until I connect them with how they came friends. Friends from school were written after writing down the school. I guess it’s reflective of the way that there are entirely separate regions of my life, in terms of time, that really don’t flow into each other. They have to be connected in their own unique way. Unfortunately I’ll have to think about this more before I can tell you what that actually means in terms of concrete words.

Speaking of thinking, I realize that I spent most of my time today doing just that. Thinking. I mark it down to thinking, but I really hope I’m actually accomplishing something. It takes a lot for me to sort out thoughts. And I really can’t form them into words. I like to think that my thoughts are just too complex. Yet I can’t remember simple facts. I mark that down to bad memory. And while I’d like to improve it, the only aspect of life in which it bothers me is remembering people’s names. Oh, and school of course (where studying is about memorization). I think that, on the other hand, I can easily grasp concepts and thus understand fundamentally how things work. And that matters much more to me than memorizing facts.

Happy 50th Birthday, Bill Nye

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Bill Nye the Science Guy was born on November 27, 1955, making him 50 years old today (if my math is right). He is a mechanical engineer who graduated from Cornell in 1977 with a B.S., and became licensed in the state of Washington in 1983. He developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor used by Boeing in the 747.

I know him from the educational TV program he hosted, Bill Nye the Science Guy, which he hosted from 1992 to 1998. “Bill’s TV persona is a tall and slender scientist wearing a lab coat and a bow-tie. He attempts to mix the serious science of everyday things with fast-paced action and humor” (wikipedia). I always found the show very entertaining, and the science made it incredibly interesting as well.

He apparently is currently working on a new TV series called The Eyes of Nye. I’ll be keeping an eye out for it!

War Research

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Some of the greatest breakthroughs were made possible by war. As devastating as it is, I can’t help but think that it’s easily possible for war to be a good thing. Without it, people are lazy. And with it, research projects get funding.

Only four years after World War II had ended in Europe, a shining technological phoenix had miraculously risen from the still-smoldering ashes of the devastation. …what might well be the invention of the century–a semiconducting device that would spawn a massive new global industry of incalculable value. …
As was true for the Bell Labs transistor, invented by John Bardeen and Walter D. Brattain in December 1947, the technology that led to the transistron emerged from wartime research on semiconductor materials, which were sorely needed in radar receivers. …

IEEE Spectrum, November 2005, p54 (emphasis mine)

The article goes on to explain that the discovery arose from the German radar program’s crash R&D program. Thus, I can’t help but think: if WWII hadn’t occurred, would we have computers today? Electronics? Robotics? For all the bad, wars also seem to contribute to scientific research. And the results are astounding.