If you haven’t seen the 2019 video, you should definitely take a look at Microsoft’s ideas about where we might be headed with computer interface design. It’s bold, slick, and leaves out a really big question.
Two things of note this week: I received distinction on my Comps, and submitted the first draft of Character in the Dark, my new book, to Blurb. If the copy I get back looks good, I’ll put it up for sale.
I originally intended to work with Engage Print like I did for Sampling Error, but I’m running into logistical constraints. First, it’s not really practical for me to bind more than 6 copies by hand, and I’d like to make the book available to a wider audience. Second, Engage’s Indigo printer can only run up to 12x18", which is slightly too small to really give the images good space on the page.
I recently wrote some quick and dirty Ruby bindings for the Vodpod API. They’re pretty rough right now, but usable.
The Hidden Spaces project is going really well, and is responsible for the slew of new photos this week. I’m immersed in Carleton lore right now, digging through tunnels and Caucus to try and piece together a story about this campus and all the weird things behind the scenes. It’s an incredible experience.
My comps is done.
I just finished writing version three—the final release, as it were—of my senior thesis, or “comps”, for Carleton. It’s an introduction to the Casimir effect, integrating aspects of quantum electrodynamics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, numerical modeling, material science, history of science, and a sampling of experimental literature. There is no original research here (save correcting a typo in the parallel-plates derivation which I suspect everybody knew about). It’s just an exercise in figuring things out, and explaining them to others.
I was watching Glen Beck today, who suggested that legislation supporting marriage equality has a more sinister motive of suppressing church religious freedoms. This argument, or some variation of it, has appeared in a number of anti-same-sex-marriage public campaigns. For a great example, take a look at the (fantastically well-designed) Yes On Prop 8 ad archives.
The idea is this: churches should be able to decide whether or not to perform marriages in accordance with their religious beliefs. Legislating that all church perform marriages for same-sex couples who approach them would be undue government interference in religious self-determination.
I’ve started having meetings with faculty and facilities in preparation for taking photographs for the next book. My goal is to explore hidden spaces at Carleton—rooftops, tunnels, basements, and secret rooms, recording messages left by past adventurers and to share the experience of discovering unseen infrastructure. Goal is to have a library of photos collected by week 6 or so, produce the book source by week 7, and have physical copies before I leave.
I went in for the first implant surgery today, to replace the missing three upper teeth from my January Broomball accident. For those of you who haven’t heard of dental implants (I hadn’t!), they’re roughly 1.5 cm titanium screws which are inserted into the bone where the tooth’s roots used to be, ending right under the gumline. Artificial teeth are then attached to those screws.
The impact shattered two teeth, so I had to have the left-behind roots extracted from my upper jaw. Between the injury itself and having to dig around a lot to get the roots out, I’m now missing the thin sheet of bone which runs over the front of the roots, for the canine side of the upper jaw. Luckily the bone near the middle is reasonably intact. This is problematic, because the implants need solid bone to anchor to. If, upon opening everything up, they found that there wasn’t enough bone to place the implants, I’d need a bone graft taken from my mandible behind the molars, and six months additional recovery for that graft to integrate. Luckily, this wasn’t the case! The implants took hold in the jaw even though the labial bone wasn’t intact. (Note to kids: another reason to get your calcium!)
Back in 2004 I played this mod for UT2004 called Neotokyo, which, in addition to being a really fun futuristic shooter with a good community, had an excellent soundtrack. Over the last five years they’ve been busy porting the game over to the Source engine, and are almost (fingers crossed) to a first release. One of the coolest things to come out of their efforts so far has been the just-released soundtrack put together by the talented Ed Harrison: a two-disc album which I now have the pleasure of owning.
First impressions: astounding. There is not a single track among the 26 that is not worth listening to carefully. The album has a characteristic “Neotokyo” design: ominous scale and atonal drones, punctuated by sampled vocals and driven by electronic baselines. Soaring orchestral movements empower tracks like “Scrap I/O” and “Tachi”, while spacious drums and harsh cello drive the centerpiece “Pravhaba” to inexorable conclusion. “Footprint” evokes a more contemplative mood, with light percussion and querulous synth piano taking time to explore the landscape, building to discontinuous crescendo. The bass sometimes feels lacking, and at some points the layered sound can become so complex it’s hard to tell what’s happening, but these are minor flaws in an all-around solid release, full of high-quality material. For $11, it’s a bargain. Go get it while it’s still around.
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.
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.
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!