math

other

So we all sit down one day and Oh hey, one of us got this crazy idea: lets make a model of the universe! And for now we’ll keep it simple, stick with just our galaxy and the Horsehead Nebula. Good? Good.

Here’s how it goes down. We make little models of the planets, all to scale, perfect scale, and we lay them out on a round table. How big were the planets? We used perfect scale…the sun, you can hardly see it, but we managed, made it happen. The sun is 0.015mm. Tiny bright yellow speck in the middle of the table. The planets? It was tough, but we made it happen, nicely painted and all. It was kinda tough to see ’em on the table, and what we presume to be far-larger-than-scale solar winds (it’s warm outside, so the ‘close the window’ idea got veto’ed quicker than a tea party filibusterer pork barrel bill*) kept blowing our planets all askew. So we glued them down and made labels. Easy.

And the horsehead nebula?

The horsehead nebula, in our model universe scaled to fit the solar system–home–on the top of a table, is properly located halfway between the earth and the moon. Nothing some good amateur rocketry couldn’t handle. Oh yeah! Almost forgot to mention, the model of the old horsehead, that was the hardest part. Little bit bigger than twice the size of Seattle.

*I proudly know next to nothing about politics.

other, stories

Little Diomede Island. The village is named Diomede and I have the privilege, the million dollar job: I am Diomede’s next 7-12 math and science teacher.

‘Excited?’ No. That word doesn’t really work; here, this works  better: I’m kinda excited like the horsehead nebula is kinda big.

Reference: here’s the horsehead nebula:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula

Yeah. Like that.

:D

Little Diomede from the side
snowy Little Diomede
Little Diomede, Alaska – The native village of Little Diomede sits on the border of Russia and the United States. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer Richard Brahm)
other, stories

Place. What is it? Where’s mine and where’s yours, right? Cities, towns, pueblos and glens and farms, where’s who’s place? There are books and theories and studies about this idea, this thing: place. And I don’t need any of them. And did I really commit homonymage there? Yes, because it looked better that way.

Because today work put me in my place. Hands of stone and no gloves and no 3 minute rounds with the 30 second breaks inbetween. Me, living breathing sweating bleeding heavy bag, while work did well the role of Ali, of Fraser, of Ward.

But you know, for the unpleasantness of it, maybe one twentieth the magnitude of that unpleasantness, there is a refreshing feeling about a good ass whuppin’. Very small, probably even smaller than a twentieth of the unpleasantness. But it’s there. Bleeding heart’s a beating heart. Breathe in. out. in. out. Breathe out deep. And breathe in deep. Breathe deep. Shake it off.

Time to go home and eat and sleep. We step into the ring again tomorrow.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

other

So a few years ago I got this brand new Lenovo laptop and decided that windows is for chumps, I’m going Ubuntu all the way.
So I installed Ubuntu, dual booting with Vista.
Then I decided that’s for chumps, real ballers nix Vista and use powerful Linux for EVERYTHING.
That’s where I found out why real ballers are real ballers (and why I wasn’t quite baller)…

My eyeballs, so much color, it burns.

This is Wes, one of the mechanics at the bike shop I worked at.
Nice shades breh.
For the record Wes also got the ultimate compliment from the local grom squad: “sweet kicks man.”
Nuff said.
I wonder if he’s still styling the white Tarmac.

cool shades breh

This was my daily morning bus trip to UW. Shot with a camera phone out the back window of the bus towards Bellevue, and towards the sunrise (dur).

back window of the bus

Complex Analysis. This was one of my favorite classes ever. The prof was legitimately crazy, absolutely brilliant, really scary at first, and more than any (but one) prof I’ve had he truly really cared about us students despite having to teach us little piddly raisins easy stuff compared to type of wild and deep things in math he deals with daily. And being a crazy old codger he somehow was one of the only profs I’ve had who really treated everybody equal. And in a bar fight this guy would lay fools out (did I mention he’s an ex-Navy-fighter-pilot?).

Linchpin lecture of complex analysis

Old phone pictures are like Cliff notes for chapters of life, aren’t they?

Conclusion: always have a phone with at least a decently good camera.

The heart of the Polaroid camera lives on.

other, stories

While this short scribbling is the type of thing generally reserved for twitter or facebook, they say your most important audience is yourself, and in this case the most important audience dearly feels this short scribbling is more significant than facebook world and/or twitter world are good for.

Without more ado:

When I click the button in the other open browser tab, I will have submitted the last homework (ironically an essay on education) of my undergrad career; my last lecture is today from 1:00 to 3:20.

*click*

*silence*

Wow.

the final final paper submission

Edit:
Class got out at slightly after 2:00. College is an interesting thing; I finished it this afternoon.

stories

Jaime Escalante died yesterday.

I had always wished I could meet him someday. I guess that won’t happen here.

RIP

:'(

ideas, other

I don’t know his last name. He has significant Autism (I didn’t catch the details when he told me about it, it was some specific type). I met him on Saturday, while trying to make some ground on a math project at my favorite cafe. I pulled out a book, and he couldn’t help but notice the publisher (good ‘ol Springer-Verlag…they’re the primary publisher of math texts, and they nigh always bind with a signature yellow cover), so he asked me what I was working on, and we proceeded to talk about math for a while.

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