A Sufi saint set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca. At the outskirts of the city he lay down by the road, exhausted from his journey. He had barely fallen asleep when he was brusquely awakened by an irate pilgrim. "This is the time when al believers bow their heads toward Mecca and you have your feet pointing toward the holy shrine. What sort of Muslim are you?" The Sufi did not move; he merely opened his eyes and said, "Brother, would you do me the favor of placing my feet where they won't be pointing to the Lord?"
My friend Jenna gave me two books as a gift last Easter upon my joining the Catholic church, and I'm finally getting around to starting them as I work my way through the books I was given/bought this year. She gave me The Song of the Bird and Taking Flight. Taking Flight is a collection of stories from various countries, various religions, various cultures. de Mello said "his task has been that of the weaver and the dyer. He takes no credit at all for the cotton and the thread." So far in 19 pages I've read a story about saint learning to appreciate the sound of the frogs, a Hasidic tale about the value of dancing as prayer, and two snippits also about dance from a Dervish and an unspecified religious leader. This book is amazing! I usually put post it notes in books to mark the passages that impact me the most, but I don't think I own enough post it notes for this one.
madladyred @ 6:05pm: RetroMacCast Episode 144 Part 3 of 3 My husband cohosts a podcast dedicated to old school macintosh computers. He's the sidekick. :) They just celebrated their 3rd year of podcasting! Normally it's just an audio podcast, with Monkeys at our house and James at his place using Skype to communicate, but on special occasions like this they meet up in person and record video. This clip is the third bit of the episode, I'm posting that one because at the end of it Monkeys does a cute little bit pretending to show up at James's house in a robe. You can watch the entire show if you like via the links on the side of the clip.
pfcottontail @ 11:37pm: Well, e-mail sent to Gabe at Penny Arcade. I wish I could work up the chutzpah next to contact Jason Calacanis! I'll definitely be doing that if the PhD thing doesn't work out...
I got my fiber optic flashlight thing in the mail today. It's actually a really really gay fairy wand. It has a water globe in the middle with glitter, and there's like 5 settings for the LEDs, ranging from "slowly scintillating" to "epileptic raver" (my terms). I almost feel bad ripping it apart. Almost.
The plan for Sunday is to finish my code (For Realsies) and try burying a fiber in a chip when I bake it. Then all I can do is pray.
I have some 1 mm LEDs, with the tiny tiny tiny contact points that I guess go on a pre-made solder pad. They are the perfect size but with the tools I have there's no way I can use them. At least they were cheap.
madladyred @ 8:52pm: Possibly the coolest high schools ever. I saw these on vixyish's page. It's two high schools (I think in her area). Shorecrest High School Video class did something called a libdub then challenged the rival high school to do a better one. How amazing are these? I don't remember doing anything this cool in high school. Although, I am feeling nostalgic about high school after watching these. Wish we were having a Saturday night gathering! I actually have something to show!
pfcottontail @ 3:37pm: This is so demoralizing. Here was my new code plan... since, in some conditions, it's impossible to find all 4 key points, and the conditions are somewhat random, I decided to write code to find two of the four points, and then determine which two points it is. This part went off fine.
Basically there's an camera image with 4 key points, and a cad file with the points on it. The CAD file is all known. The hope was, using the two located image points, and the four known CAD points, I could determine general areas to look for the two remaining points. It works..... okay.
The problem here is that I have two non-ideal solutions, and I'm not sure which professor to ask. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask them all. The first solution is to inject some food coloring into the holes made by the key points. It's a little tricky because the needle has to be angled in the hole to allow for air to escape so the color can go in. This is done with the chip liquid channels filled with food coloring. The alternative is to have an empty chip. Since, in theory, an empty chip won't turn up anything besides the key points, I can have looser tolerances to finding them, and it won't located a liquid channel and go "hey this looks like a hole!" Then the liquid channels can be filled.
Okay so it's not really a problem, so much as a re-imagining. I'll send out those e-mails. Thanks for the tips.
Are there any filters that block only the UV spectrum, and are there any filters that block everything BUT the UV spectrum? I think I may need one or both of those. :|
I feel like the 'mult' calculation is done somewhat arbitrarily. I also understand that none of this will make any sense to anyone. In fact, the only reasons I can make heads or tails of it is a) I wrote it, and b) I have the picture and CAD files in front of me for comparison. ( Now for your pleasure, here's more Matlab code. )
pfcottontail @ 1:06am: Well this is kinda cool. I just realized (or they recently added) that my online credit card account can do expense reports. So I can punch in, say, 7/30 to 12/15 and it tells me where I burned all my money!
For instance.... auto-related: $941. I assume that includes gas. Groceries.... $1500 wtf. Not to be confused with Dining out... $550 holy Jesus.
Long story short, check your online accounts for stuff like this and it can help point out where you're spending money, and that makes it easier to figure where you can cut costs.
madladyred @ 10:09pm: Speaking of great teachers... One of my favorite college professors passed away this morning - Dr. Richard Warren. He taught humanities for the college for many years. I had his Introduction to Humanities back in 1988, just out of high school. One of my favorite memories from class is of him doing an impression of "Papa Haydn" telling the story about how Haydn would place LOUD INSTRUMENTS in the middle of quiet sections of his symphonies to wake people up. Dr. Warren would start the story in a quiet voice (the music of the symphony could lull audience members into sleep...), then he would talk really loudly saying "boom boom boom" or some such, then go back to his normal voice to finish the story - all with the happiest expression on his face, marching back and forth pumping his arms and beating the air as if he were playing a drum.
He also told a story about when he and his wife moved down here in the sixties. At a laundrymat there were signs on the machines saying "whites" and "colored," and his wife who had never seen such blatant discrimination pointed to the signs and said "Look, they make you presort your laundry before coming to the shop." I don't know why, but that story really stuck with me.
Finally, I remember loving him because of his views on the Gordon Rule. In Florida we have a law called the Gordon Rule that requires all AA degree seeking students write a minimum of 24,000 words over the course of their degree. Colleges can decide how this is accomplished. When I was a student I had to write 6000 words in each of my English composition classes and 6000 words in each of my humanities classes. Dr. Warren must have thought the same as I still do - if you are adding extra words to your research paper to pad it out, that is not good writing. Conciseness is a virtue in writing. Admittedly, it's one I lack, but I know it's admirable. Anyway, Dr. Warren let us count the words in our class notes in addition to the words in our papers. If we still didn't have the 6000 words, he let us write a word over and over again (Gordon Rule, Gordon Rule, Gordon Rule, Gordon Rule) until you finally reached 6000. It felt rebellious.
He retired ages ago, but just this past year I happened to bump into him at the post office. I got to tell him how fondly I looked back on his class and how much I learned from him. He was really pleased, and he talked at great length about what he'd been up to lately. He was in great spirits, he was being recognized for some sort of award, and he was all smiles. I'm glad that's my last memory and that I got one more chance to see him.
One of my favorite instructors dropped off a giant stack of grade change requests today. It's not uncommon for him to drop off a giant stack of grade changes, which means he has spent a lot of time chatting with me in my office while I process the requests. I've talked about him before - he breeds rabbits and has a million fascinating stories. Anyway, as he was leaving he casually mentioned "By the way, the dog we named after you is having puppies." I didn't know he'd named a dog after me! Of course, once I found that out I asked him a billion questions. Apparently they got her in April and she carries a recessive redhair gene, hence the namesake. I think it is incredibly sweet, although being a breeder he has named loads and loads of animals, so it probably doesn't mean as much to him as to me. Doesn't matter, I'm still tickled pick that I'm thought of outside of the office. Sometimes you feel like a little unappreciated automaton in enrollment services office.
No, I'm not getting one of the puppies. He breeds dogs, too, and these are purebred and quite costly. But he's promised to take pictures for me. :)
madladyred @ 6:26pm: Christmas Prank On Louie I guess I was lucky my friends just left lobsters everywhere. :) Speaking of lobsters, one of my friends gave me a lobster Christmas tree ornament today. :) :) :)
I think my favorites are the toilet paper and the clock. Part of me thinks "I hope they used recycled" paper or "this is not a green prank," but most of me giggles. In the response video you learn they also wrapped his mail and his mailbox.
pfcottontail @ 2:34pm: This is such fantastic news I can't believe it. It looks like Adventure Time will become a series on Cartoon Network in March. There's all sorts of info on a blog. If you haven't seen the original Adventure Time then you are a bad person.
Also worth noting is that all my letters of rec and applications and junk are officially done and turned in now. U Pitts didn't get my GRE scores or official UF transcript yet, but they're not due until mid January. Also, I know I sent them. Also, they got my FAU transcript so I know I sent them to the right place. I'll worry about that later.
pfcottontail @ 1:13am: I haven't gotten any e-mails letting me know about one of my rec letters. Maybe two. I don't even know. Technically they were all due on the 15th for 3 universities, and maybe the 18th for a fellowship, and then the last university os January. I'm going to campus tomorrow to finish my code and ask the professor what's up. This whole school situation's a crazy mess.
Parents got me a 61 key keyboard. It's pretty massive, I think it was like $125, so not too pricey. I USB'ed it to my laptop and Fruity Loops recognized and worked with it immediately, so that's got me pretty pumped. Now I just need some musical talent maybe and I can start making some tunes. Really gotta get this code finished and start writing this thesis, too, hard, so I can start programming this game my friends are working on.
Speaking of, there's a new trailer for the Alice In Wonderland movie coming in March.
The trainer and I tried to max out my bench press today and see what it was, but there were some issues and I couldn't lift the weight. We did some work with partial reps. Hopefully in a few weeks we'll go back and see. Hoping for 150. >:|
madladyred @ 10:10pm: Messing around with cutting and pasting I want a reading icon. I don't know what I want. Look at the cute owl icon I made while messing around with pictures of people reading.
madladyred @ 5:43pm: I'm Yours(ukulele) ** CUTEST LITTLE KID EVER!!! Saw this on ohiblather's LJ. :) Since we aren't getting together this Saturday I'm going ahead and posting it. :) :) :) Put if on full screen if you can, his expressions are so cute. His nose is itching or something, but he won't stop playing to scratch it. He's also *really* good at ukulele!
pfcottontail @ 12:47am: Between 11/07 and 12/05 I spent $175 on gas. Sucks!
I have another idea for my thesis. I've stopped hoping that it will make everything work, but I figure it's something to try while I think of other ideas. I need an optical fiber, though, and a way to connect it to an LED. I figure Target has some cheap fiber optic decorations, and I figure some glue could attach it. I'm checking electronics stores for maybe something a little more efficient, though.
This is the crummy pattern I get in when I am not making progress in school. I play way too many video games and I stop doing martial arts, my physical activity and socializing drops, it's just bad on every level. Hopefully this will be the last week of that. If the fiber optic idea works, and I finish my code, then everything will be fine.....
PS: And insomnia.
And I just spent like $45 on parts for my thesis. Hopefully I'll get reimbursed; he's said before if I show a receipt he'll cover me. But some of this stuff I think I want to keep, so I should really go through all my receipts and work it out for him.
pfcottontail @ 11:05pm: I'm going to design "warlock candy." Then I will find a manufacturer and distributor. Then I will set up a licensing deal with Blizzard and sell it. Then I won't need to worry about this friggin' thesis!
Also, first boss in ICC10 downed, woop woop! Hardest healing fight ever, I used shadowfiend twice!
When I opened my office door the background paper for my decorations snagged and came loose so that my Winterland came toppling down on my head. I couldn’t get to the only non-wheeled chair near my office right away because of the Toys-for-Tots bicycle currently residing in my office, so it took some finagling and moving things around before I could repair the damage to my door. Immediately after fixing the door, I picked up my bags and attempted to move them to my desk whereupon I dropped my (empty) coffee cup. It skittered across my entire desk before whacking into the printer. I almost caught it, but the trajectory change sent it to the floor, where the handle broke off into several pieces. The distraction of the door and coffee cup made me forget to take my keys out of my doorknob, so about an hour later I got reprimanded by a coworker and lectured about the dangers of leaving your keys out for students to steal. She also questioned me in a what felt like at the time an accusatory tone as to why I didn’t have the Jabberwocky doll hanging from the door like I had originally planned on doing. Unfortunately, I was on the phone, so when I didn’t answer her questions she left. After I got off the phone I tracked her down to explain the morning’s events, and she was perfectly normal and not at all huffy, so I don’t know what was happening earlier. The Toys-for-Tots frustrations continued today, to the point where I actually gave what felt like a “I cannot believe this” expression to someone and walked out on the conversation. I am never volunteering to help with Toys-for-Tots again. Next year I'm just going to donate $$ and stay out of it. ((If I go to each team member and ask for a preference/opinion and everyone in the group says "Whatever the group wants." then it means THE GROUP DOESN'T WANT ANYTHING and either NOTHING WILL BE DONE or else the other team members are unfairly forcing one person to have to make the decision instead of doing a democratic vote. This is especially unfair if said person IS NOT THE GROUP LEADER and EXPRESSLY SAID in an earlier email "I would like to help with the wrapping" and "I do not want to be in charge.")) Grrrrr. Also, it was just plain busy today. I had several “I cannot believe you are actually asking these questions” moments, where people honestly do not seem to realize they are asking something off the wall or impossible and get upset when it can't be done. And I had another student who instead of reading the letter sent to him calls in to have me read the letter to him over the phone. I swear, that is all I did. He had the letter in his hand. I read the copy we have on file. I did not explain it, he didn’t ask for an explanation. That was it. Does that make any sense? No. The weather seemed to be working in concert with the day's events. It was foggy and rainy, so the drive in and the drive home was unpleasant and at times scary. Our parking lot has bad drainage which, when coupled with the construction of the new community center, led to a GIANT mud puddle covering 90% of the lower parking lot. I had to go to my car to pick up some Christmas bags for the Toys-for-Tots gifts, so I had to make a wide detour to start at the high ground and walk back down the lot between the car hoods using my umbrella as a brace to pole vault from cement blocker to cement blocker in front of each parking space in an effort to get to my car w/o soaking my new shoes. When I returned to my office after loading up the gifts I left my umbrella and my keys in my coworker's office. My back hurts. My stomach hurts. I accidently stayed 45 minutes late, forgetting Sears was coming by tonight to discuss a new A/C. Dealing with them actually lifted my mood because they joked around a lot. Doesn't change the fact I just spent a bunch of money and delayed dinner two hours (my fish was dry & my broccoli soggy), but I did laugh a lot, which means I'm smiling as I'm typing this whine.
I recognize it could be worse - my door decorations could have been destroyed when it fell, my coffee cup could have been full of hot coffee, someone could have stolen my keys, my coworker could have not noticed my keys and umbrellas and not returned them to me leaving me frantic when it came time to leave work, I could have soaked my shoes, and I could have gotten into an accident/trapped in traffic due to the inclimate weather. Even though I got frustrating questions, I've certainly had worse. I'm still irritable over the Toys-for-Tots, but the cause is good, so I just need to get over it. Plus, I'm sure the other group members are probably thinking "That MLR is demanding, why does she keep asking me the same question over and over." or "Darn it all, why can't MLR just make a decision." w/o realizing 1) how incredibly hampered I feel by the fact that I'm not the team leader so I don't feel justified in making a decision and 2) how when the times earlier that I expressed my opinions were questioned it destroyed my confidence in my opinions, so as much as I'm feeling taken advantage of I also recognize they may be feeling the same thoughts. My back hurts, but it's certainly hurt worse. And my stomach is feeling much better now that I've eaten.
So I wouldn't call today a Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. It just kinda sucks a little.
And we're under a tornado warning right now. And they keep cutting into the show I'm watching.
But if the news reports are to be believed, people in the areas just above me have it a lot worse, so once again I should shut up with the whinging.
And even with the tv cutting out for weather notifications, I still got to see the party where Felecia Day was singing "White Lie", which was adorable.
I sullenly declare the glass half full. (Possibly due to all the rain.)
madladyred @ 11:58pm: Norway Spiral UFO 2 Saw this on DebGeisler's LJ and was amazed. If I ever saw anything like this in the sky I would not think to grab a video camera. I would just freak out and possibly stop/drop/roll or hide under a table.
"Anyone for some Arctic roll? Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE What's blue and white, squiggly and suddenly appears in the sky? If you know the answer, pop it on a postcard and send it to the people of Norway, where this mysterious light display baffled residents yesterday. Speculation was increasing today that the display was the result of an embarrassing failed test launch of a jinxed new Russian missile.
pfcottontail @ 4:00am: I don't know why this issue didn't come up earlier, or why the lab guy didn't think of it when he proposed this project, but I don't think, even if I manage to get an optical fiber and align everything perfectly, that the yellow water will make any difference over regular water. The channel is friggin' like 100 um deep, if that. The only way to see color with that thickness is if it's a really solid, strong, or opaque color. He should have known that, and I should have realized it. I'm really not sure what to do now. As always, I have some ideas, but not a lot of confidence.
I could have a multi-layer chip designed so there is a small well. I could probably get 1 mm depth in there, which would be a lot better than 100 um. Or I could try to feed a fiber in sideways, because the channel is about 50 mm long (1 mm wide, 100 um tall). In both of these cases, I get more alignment and fabrication issues. Plus parts ordered. He wants me to crank this paper out but I just don't see it happening.
Part of me wants to just call it here. Get into a PhD program or get a job at Scripps or try and start a business and never even finish my Master's. But it's stupid to dodge getting a degree at the very end because an experiment doesn't work. Experiments don't work all the time. Just means I'll have to read more papers looking for answers, and put up with the pressure a bit longer.
Sorry for dumping all my school issues in LJ; I hope to stop soon. This stuff can't go in facebook or twitter or any place with my name on it, for obvious reasons.
madladyred @ 8:51pm: Christmas Door Decorating Competition EDIT: I won for best theme. :) Also, one of my mentor teachers told me I should research turning my Tenniel captions into Christmas cards; she really thought they would sell. :)
Last year I won our office Holiday Door Decorating Competition with my Beatles Chirstmas Time Is Here Again Door. This year my theme is Alice in Wonderland. (Alice in a Winter Wonderland.) I'm not completely done yet, but I'm nearly there. I'm taking the Tenniel illustrations and redoing them as if they were part of Christmas/holiday story. I admit that I am not artistically talented, so the coloring looks like a three year old did it, but I'm happy with the concepts. :)
pfcottontail @ 2:22pm: UUuuurgh I am so unmotivated today. Seriously, these LED/diode issues are killing my interest in accomplishing anything. Think I'll grab some food and code a bit there and then maybe call it a day.
At least this PDMS chip is working well!
Hey, does anyone know where I can buy tubes of exactly 5 mm inner diameter? If I can align a tube then I can put some distance between the LED and the diode, and it might resolve some of the focusing problems. It's at least something to do while I pray for some new tiny LEDs and/or fiber optics.
I wish I knew some good machine shops in the area; if I whipped up some 3D models and had some platforms and stuff made then all of this could be a lot easier.
Part of the problem is the tolerances in making PDMS chips. A petri dish is covered in foil, the wafer is put on that, and the PDMS is poured over it. That's a lot of small errors that can add up to a difference of over a millimeter, which is not a small deal when the liquid channels are, at most, 1mm wide, and the components are spaced maybe 5 mm apart.
pfcottontail @ 1:51am: I friggin' just remembered that it was the guy who runs the lab, a few weeks back, who said I wouldn't need optical fibers and I should just embed the LED in the chip. I'm pretty sure I can safely say now that embedding an LED doesn't work for what we're doing. I sent him an e-mail requesting he purchase some optical fibers and some tiny tiny LEDs. I don't think the experiment can continue without them.
Now I get to sweat while I wait. I pointed him to links on Digikey, but there's always the chance that they will require 100 or something zany as a minimum order, and then I'd have to go back to searching. Like really, where the hell do you buy small quantities of optical fiber and tiny tiny tiny LEDs?
Anyway, all the PhD stuff is done, and I got my flu shots. So the thesis is the only thing left.... until the job interview (bumped because the guy is sick). I think I got some slick code going for my image alignment, but it's not done just yet...
As for me, I'm still flipping out. Lab professor called me today with a bit of an interrogation because he has a paper due tomorrow and I had jack shit to write about. I filled out like a page on the hardware we're using and why, so that should hopefully tide everyone over. I think my alignment shit is all ready, I re-mounted the LEDs and junk onto clear plastic. Anyway, more of the same. Enjoy the drama with Dragon Con!
I actually had a dream last night that I was in my car pretty much crying while listening to Don't Stop Believing. I also ran around for 3 hours trying to get errands done and got nothing accomplished.I think if I can focus for like one more week I can get everything squared away.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
A story from Taking Flight by Anthony de Mello
loved
sick
nostalgic
cranky
anxious
sleepy