nawl

Sigh. I'm getting old. I was all happy to get cookbooks and an electric hand mixer as presents.

Anecdote from post-Christmas adventures for lack of other things to write about:
My step-grand-parents own a Ford Expedition, the largest SUV I've ever seen, which is affectionately referred to as "the behemoth". At one point while a large number of the kids, spouses, and grandkids were up visiting we all decided to make the short drive to visit some more family. It is established that there are 8 of us, and since normal minivans fit 7 people, the behemoth is the only single vehicle that will fit all of us and the several rather large packages we were bringing.

So we all pack in, and was almost ok to be using the SUV since it was actually carrying a full load of people. It was not, however, towing a boat, so we were still wasting resources.

This SUV has a little digital display above the windshield in the center that shows, the current gas mileage. It changes constantly: 10 (mpg)... 5... 8... 12... 5... Occasionally the numbers grow as high as 25 or 30 when driving downhill.

While we were at said relatives house, it began to rain, then slush, and finally real snowflakes were falling from the sky. After a bit we established that the snow was beginning to stick and that we should all drive back to where it was not snowing so as to be safe. Oh, but we drove an SUV, that should at least be a little better. But no, the SUV doesn't even have 4 wheel drive.

In other news, my readership will not only include my extensive immediate family, but now potentially a whole crowd of extended family and family friends. I should be careful in what I write. Or learn a foreign language that doesn't have online translation tools.

Posted by nadia at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Sunday Douglas took me to the Dickens Fair. It was a nice way to compensate for the decided lack of holiday spirit in exams. Most of the people who do Victorian also do Renaissance Faire so it's almost the same scene, except that I'm not quite as familiar with the costuming rules.

I spent almost the whole day dancing at Fezziwig's, or at least learning to trip over myself a little less in a Viennese waltz (and make a fool of myself trying to dance lead with a girl...) and bouncing around the set dances they did. In one we got to draw air swords and gallop at our partners. There is a pretty obvious crossover between the people who are crazy enough to dance at the Dickens fair and the people who frequent the Gaskell's balls, as well as with (more surprisingly) the Friday Night Waltzes, neither of which I've actually managed to go to yet.

Today... the beach at Half Moon Bay. The weather was beautiful, stunning, clear after all the storms. And the waves were amazing. I could be wrong, but I don't think I've seen the Pacific up close since coming back. I didn't bring my camera, but other people have pictures of the awesome sand cliffs here and here.

Posted by nadia at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A week or so ago, Ping told me about this Creative Commons launch party that would be taking place. I hadn't heard of it, but it sounded neat enough.

Everything concerning the licenses was very polished; the number and kinds of supporters they've already gained is impressive, although it makes sense that they wouldn't want to stick their necks out before gaining support. I certainly hope that they catch on for artistic works much like GPL and open licenses already have for software.

The choice of RDF for the "machine-readable" format of the licenses is politically rather interesting...

I did *not* expect this random event to be a weird meeting point between people I know from Ping and Berkeley, RDF weenies I got to know while I was in France, and even the Santa Cruz geek (!) scene.

I also got to bind my own copy of Alice in Wonderland courtesy of the Bookmobile, and a CD from DJ Spooky (who actually gave a very cool introductory talk before his performance, discussing, among other things, Max/MSP and HTML as this dialog between servers and links, which Hunter later criticised me for giggling at), and we saw a very good theramin player. Larry Lessig sounded like a slam poet when giving his speech.

Posted by nadia at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My 120 final is Wednesday. I've started studying early (go me). A collection of quotes from the professor across the semester:

"Without these tools to understand things, we're just monkeys running computer programs."

"Using terms like 'proper' and 'improper' to describe math is more fun. But maybe it's not as appropriate since this isn't a math class. But then again, they have the term 'degenerate'."

"I would love to teach rhetoric sometime just to retaliate to the world the harm that was done to me."

"Let's say you put z^1000 in the denominator, because you like to do things with style."

"Just keep accepting each spoonful..."

"Undergraduates are very respectful of professors, for some reason. Graduate students are more... contemptuous, so you have to fight back somehow."

"Let me not use the word 'is', let me use the words 'can be described as'."

"No one is going to be photographing the entire sequence of blackboards for the sake of history, I'm not Richard Feynman."

"If this is right... of course this is right, I wouldn't write it on the board if it weren't."

On the idea that the continuous time fourier series is more natural and that you can describe the discrete time case using impulse trains:
"Those professors [who disagree] would have me shot like an abortion doctor if I taught that." "I wouldn't trust those people with my children."

After mentioning that Georgia Tech teaches DSP first:
"Earth first are those radical environmentalists who kill people for cutting down trees... there are certainly some people I like less than certain trees."

"I made it through 30 years of happiness without ever knowing that there was such a thing as a difference equation."

"If I had to live the rest of my life only choosing continuous or discrete, I know which one I'd pick."

Posted by nadia at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In honor of my physics final tomorrow that I am currently not studying for, a few quotes from prof. Lanzara:

"What we want to find: who is E1?"

"Particle will be scattering in the All direction."

"... is a very interesting, if you want, piece of science."

I'm attracted to the zen-like quality of her English mistakes. Who *is* E1? Physics would be so much more satisfying if they phrased problems like "what is the buddha-nature of E1?" I also like the concept of an All direction, and being able to take a little piece of science home with me.

On a similar and yet philosophically opposite note, I noticed some odd emphases in my textbook. Specifically, it bolds important words for us in the text, presumably to make it easier to skim for important ideas: "This idea is often called Planck's quantum hypothesis..." "The photoelectric effect..." "... called the work function..." etc.

So why, uh, "... if an electron collides with a positron, the two annihilate each other..." (p. 957 in Giancoli vol. II)

Posted by nadia at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Maybe I feel about lard the way you feel about cilantro."
-- Hunter

For the record, this was after a conversation where he disagreed with my assertion that cilantro makes everything taste better.

Posted by nadia at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sit down with a piece of paper (or a chalkboard) and try to draw the US, with all the states labeled, from memory. Talia and I entirely forgot about Nebraska until we went through the state song, and we munged the eastern seaboard, but we don't like them anyways.

Then we tried to do the same for Europe. There are a lot less European countries than states. I can do western Europe (my Germany was a weird shape, though), but my knowledge just ends with the balkans and all those former USSR countries. It's pretty sad. I did get Romania right, though. :)

This was after Anthony read a little infographic in the National Geographic on the results of an international student quiz in geography, where american students performed pretty pitifully and could only identify correctly on a map on average three countries out of eleven on a list that included China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Indonesia. German students were the best, with an average of six.

Snacks for procrastination: a glass of eggnog lite, hummus, and a mango.

Posted by nadia at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[16:19] <nykoh> Messieurs, on a touché le fond, on est sur un chat à 1h30 du mat' entrain de regarder sur internet un gars qui fume sa clope en suède...

Posted by nadia at 04:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In honor of my early final tomorrow in CS 70 (and my lack of desire to study for it), a collection of quotes from prof. Satish Rao that I've scribbled in my notes, approximately in reverse chronological order:

While going through a proof on the board: "Every step I made... every step you take..." (long pause) "every step I... you know..."

"You should just know how to run the algorithm..." (pause) "I don't know how to run the algorithm."

"See? That's the best, if you can re-derive RSA, if you know all the theorems... and it'll take you a long time and you'll still be in bad shape."

"I remember being fooled by this when I was a kid... but I grew up in Texas, so, you know..."

"Personally, I think it's valuable to have a little angst in your learning experience."

"So you'll see that this doesn't work, but maybe there's a different proof. There's not a different proof because the answer is no."

On teaching the class: "I learned everything from the notes..." (pause) "...and the fact that I know it."

"I'm sort of a deadpan guy... maybe... I mumble..."

Into his cell phone, after answering it in the middle of class: "Omigod, the big dog? The new big dog."

"Character corruption is like when someone offers you some pot or something. Bit corruption is flipping ones and zeroes."

"When I was an undergrad, I looked at this and was like, what the heck. But now, I look at it and I'm like... uhh... uhh... oh bad channel."

"But anyways, that's not so relevant."

While discussing secret sharing: "Anyone ever heard of that song 'go ask Alice'? Anyone? Anyone?"

Posted by nadia at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today my EE professor told us a story. It will probably be amusing to all two of you who are familiar with the people involved.

So it starts with Neal Stephenson, who was a guest speaker at last year's faculty retreat. (I believe I vaguely remember Jack telling me about this before, actually.) He was discussing some research he's been doing for an upcoming novel on the mathematical notation war between Newton and Leibniz during the development of calculus. And then William Kahan (of floating point fame) apparently just tore him apart, saying that Stephenson had no idea what he was talking about.

Kahan, I should mention, is rather famous here for being a ridiculously difficult professor. I'm not the best one to tell the stories, though.

On a related note, while reading one of the faqs off of Neal Stephenson's page, I noticed that a certain Ian Goldberg was credited with writing a perl script that appeared in Cryptonomicon. I know that name (excepting the small possibility of an evil twin also into cryptography) from none other than my dear friend Ping.

Posted by nadia at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)