musics
Hey Everybody- I added a some bling to the right side of the blog: a pandora widget. That link goes to my profile. There are other places I get music from sometimes: seeqpod, last.fm, iTunes, but I’ve found the playlist generation at pandora to be the best. Lately I’ve been listening to either my ‘Gil Evans’ station, or the kbps radio stream (classical music, broadcast from my Alma Mater high school, Benson Polytechnic). The well crafted music without words is quite soothing to me right now.
wind chill
I met wind chill today for the first time. I was walking up toward the Carrier Dome when a gust picked up; it took my breath away. It stopped our conversation. To quote Josh “my eyes are watering uncontrollably.” This was some of the coldest air I have ever felt. But then it stopped, the gust was only 5 or 10 seconds long. I was feeling the effects for a few moments afterward. I’m not sure if it was the stairs or the wind, but I think I was breathing harder than usual, kind of felt a little shocked. The only part of me that was exposed was my face, but with the heat wicking power of that wind, it was enough.
Some facts: the ambient temperature outside is about -14 C (7 F) right now, and the windchill brought it down to approximately -25 C (-15 F) for a few seconds. brrr.
For added emphasis, here is a map:
If I could get a picture of wind chill, I would put that in too.
cross country skiing!
Corey and I went cross country skiing at White Pass today- it was a lot of fun. There weren’t many people there because US 12 was closed at Packwood, so no Seattle people. We came the other direction and only saw lots of evidence of flood damage.
We did several of the trails: practice loop, deer creek, dog lake loop, biathlon loop (no shooting), up The Hill, dark meadows, kendall konnector, and the end of the lake loop back to the yurt.
Here are a couple of pictures:
I skied about 6.5 miles, Corey went out for a second round, so we think he did about 10 miles. Pretty excellent day. If Corey posts some of his pictures, he got action shots, I’ll edit and add a link at the bottom of this story.
[update: Corey has put up some pictures!]
new phone
I decided it was time for a change. I got a new phone, but not your usual iPhone, or anything fancy. Actually, I call it my luddite phone- it has almost no features, just a phone, txt, and one alarm. I got a new motofone on ebay for $34 (including shipping). But, it does have unusually long battery life and a cool e-ink display. If I get heavy into texting, I’ll switch back to my other wimo phone (even though I pretty much hate it). I just popped in my sim card from the old phone, which had all my contacts in it, and away I went. Corey called me from across the room to check if it worked. Nick txt’d me a really long txt message to make fun of the fact that I can only see eight characters at a time. My parents called just to check on me. I was pretty popular last night!
PGF/Tikz and the USGS (random and unrelated, I know…)
Tikz stuff (LaTeX):
Well, one of the fun things I did over the break so far was to experiment with Tikz. There are a couple of things I can show you. One is my sketch of the Bender bouncer:
impact harmonic oscillator exhibits chaotic behavior
The source file is here, the original sized image is here. I heard about the Bender bouncer (named for Paul Bender) at a colloquium at WWU many years ago when I was an undergrad. I’ve always been interested it since then.
Another is some nicely rendered strain curves of the LIGO detectors during S5:
LIGO S5 Strains, taken from John Zweizig's official page
Here is a link to the pdf. The source file for this is here.
Tikz/PGF is much easier to use and more powerful than either picture (standard LaTeX drawing environment) or pstricks. I have used these recently (pstricks here). The learning curve is a little steeper, but the manual is also excellent, with many concrete examples. Also, the only editor that is needed to make these excellent figures is a text editor, something I approve of.
USGS Stuff:
This USGS publication on Yellowstone is awesome.
I saw it in print when I visited there this summer, it was about $50. I guessed at the time that I could find it online for free. Sure enough you can, right here.
Snowy Portland
While I was in Portland, OR the weather man said the city had the snowiest December on record. I believe him- I had never seen so much snow during the 20 years I grew up there. It just seemed to keep coming. Here are some photos:
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| snowy portland |
quick update
It’s the end of the semester, last day of classes today! Mostly just putting up some pictures, in lieu of an actual post, with writing. I can give a quick list of recent happenings:
- went to my cousin’s for Thanksgiving, at the Tuscarora Nation.
- walked at Beaver Lake, in the little bit of snow that was on the ground.
- brought some interesting research on glitches in LIGO to near completion, I’ll present it on Monday.
Check out my photos here:
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| 20081204 |
snow!
It’s been snowing for the past week pretty much.
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I’m pretty happy about it! I think my car has about 7 inches of snow on it. If you are really wondering what weather I’m dealing with, I’ve got a couple of links for you:
- channel 9 – from the tv
- radar – images provided by NOAA
- weekly – forecast
- hourly – my personal favorite!
Right now, they all say snow!
sunset
sorry for the no-blogging lately. Some things I have done
- went home (to WA) and came back
- had another bout of MdDS after I got back
- then I was sick
- went adventuring (maybe call it campus-spelunking) and got the following picture (with the crappy cell phone, grrrr).
unfortunately, that is all I have time for.
snow!?!
They tell me it isn’t unheard of, but this morning it snowed a little on the drive in to campus. Well, really it was mixed snow and rain, but still, it was my first NY snow. I was excited!
