http://llandryn.net/blog/ Memos from the blue planet en Copyright 2008 Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:33:34 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss test2 http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/07/nope_not_that_easy.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/07/nope_not_that_easy.html Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:33:34 -0500 This is a test. http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/07/could_this_really_have_been_th.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/07/could_this_really_have_been_th.html Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:29:45 -0500 I'm about to update my MovableType software--ugh. I've been putting it off for a long time. I'll be down for a while; hopefully not for long. See ya. http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/warning_falling_debris.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/warning_falling_debris.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:45:26 -0500 the hand. There's a petrified hand in one of the walls, which was discovered during an attempted remodel when some old brickwork was being knocked out. The hand is (supposedly) that of a vicar who was caught cheating while playing cards, and punishment was summarily carried out by the chopping off of his hand as it lay on the table. "Cards" are still visible under the fingers. Hard to believe these slips of paper would have survived being walled up for 700 years, but...oh well. It's a good story, and it's definitely a petrified hand. The place is supposedly haunted, but it's way cool enough with or without ghosts or even (reprise spooky music)...the hand. ]]> http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/i_love_this_place.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/i_love_this_place.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:22:44 -0500 in the same plane because the airline doesn't have another plane available, and the mechanical difficulty is just a loss of air circulation in the coach cabin. Who needs it? So what else would have to happen for this to be the Worst Flight Ever? 1) The captain never turns off the "Fasten Seat Belt" sign due to heavy turbulence. 2) The lack of air circulation makes the plane hot, and 3) exacerbates all of the following: (you're in a middle seat, of course) ...3a) the person on your left hasn't bathed, and ...3b) the person on your right is eating salami and drinking beer, and ...3c) at least one person on the plane is puking. (Bonus points if the person puking is you.) 4) At least one baby on the plane is crying. (Double bonus points if the crying baby is yours.) 5) The lavatories run out of TP, paper towels, and tissue (Yes, it happens--been there, done that.) 1 and 5 may be incompatible. If you earn bonus points for both 3c and 4, you win.]]> http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/the_worst_flight_ever.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/the_worst_flight_ever.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:47:58 -0500 So much for melatonin and valerian root. I almost dozed off a couple of times, but that was about it. It was one of the most miserable flights I've ever been on, and would have topped the list were it not for the women sitting on either side of me, who were friendly without being overly talkative--we all had our own headphones and two of us had iPods--and non-territorial where the arm rests were concerned. The plane was a large one with two aisles and a bank of seats in the middle, and I was in the center of the middle bank, in row 30. The way the rows were laid out, seat-seat-aisle-seat-seat-seat-aisle-seat-seat, my seat was the only one in the row that was neither a window seat nor an aisle seat. Which isn't such a bad layout, but sucks for the 14.3% of us who end up in the middle. The reading lights over the center bank of seats weren't working, nor were the call lights, nor, apparently, was there any air. It was hot. The heat of the plane set off my own internal furnace, and I was in a sweat almost continuously. By mid-flight my jeans were wet clear through and my thin knit shirt was clinging to me. I was itchy and fidgety. My back started to hurt. I couldn't sit still for 5 seconds. Halfway through the flight the video programming failed and never came back on. You'd think they might turn the lights back on so people could read, seeing as how we had nothing to watch and the reading lights weren't working, but they didn't, so the only thing left to do was try to sleep. Right. Was there a time when it was fun to fly on a plane? I can't remember. At least they served us a meal. http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/did_not_sleep_on_the_flight_to.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/did_not_sleep_on_the_flight_to.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:52:46 -0500 melatonin. Might as well give it a try, I thought, and while I was there I picked up some valerian root capsules, which were on the shelf next to it. There's no way to know if they really helped, or if the effect was psychological, or if it was just the relief of Friday having rolled around, or the relief of having taken Saint to the vet to have the staples removed from his incision earlier in the day. I intended to blog about Saint's surgery, but the pictures I took were pretty disturbing. He's feeling pretty good now though. About a year ago Saint ruptured the ACL, or rather, the CCL, as it's called in dogs, in his left hind leg. I took him to the vet, but he was barely limping and she didn't think it could be a complete tear. Maybe it was, maybe not. During the months that followed it did tear completely. The joint stabilized but became arthritic, and a couple of months ago it got worse. Two weeks ago he had TTA surgery, by which time the cartilege between the tibia and femur had been torn and the knee was severely arthritic. These are the "before" pics. His surgery was on June 6, so these were taken one or two days post-surgery: The injury: The insult: The icepack (bags of frozen peas): Not a happy camper. Here's the "after" pic, taken a few minutes ago: Still not very cheerful because he can't run and play--I couldn't get him to smile for the camera--but he's feeling fine.]]> http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/happy_summer_solstice_1.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/happy_summer_solstice_1.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:16:36 -0500 And an hour and a half the night before, as well. Last night I tried all kinds of visualization to lull myself to sleep. Any peaceful thought that arose, I followed it wherever it went. Sometime around 3 am the image of a bubble with a hazy surface popped into my head. It was sitting on the ground and was about 5 inches across. I picked it up and, holding it in my hands, started to grow it in my mind. I decided it was a bubble of non-existence. Inside the bubble there was nothing--no matter, no light, no sound, no time or space. No universe. The dimensions of the bubble were defined by the space outside of it, not by anything within it. It grew until I was lying on the surface of it, arms and legs splayed. And then I thought--what if black holes are really bubbles of non-existence? We know that matter and light spiral into them and are never seen again. We know stuff is attracted to them by gravity, but what is gravity anyway? A weak force that acts at a distance, sure, but how? We don't really know. We can describe it, but we don't really understand it. And what if the force that attracts matter and light to black holes is something completely different anyway? Why not? We know the universe is expanding, but expanding into what? Non-existence? Is it necessarily expanding uniformly? Couldn't there have been Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, or Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities, or Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities, that resulted in pockets of non-existence being surrounded by universe? Could the universe be like Swiss cheese, riddled with holes? Just a thought. Anyway, it failed to put me to sleep. http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/this_is_my_brain_on_an_hour_an.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/this_is_my_brain_on_an_hour_an.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:55:42 -0500
see more dog pictures www.petsofhomeless.com ]]> http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/lol_lol_lol_and_then_this.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/06/lol_lol_lol_and_then_this.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:45:41 -0500 I'm exhausted. Today was the neighborhood yard sale. I made 87 bucks and change turning some of my stuff into somebody else's problem. I didn't get rid of all of it--I carried a few things back inside and took 3 boxes of video tapes to the thrift shop. The "Architectural Digests" are on their way to the senior center, and a young girl whose teacher is a photography buff walked away with an armload of "Doubletakes"; the rest of the magazines are down at the curb waiting for the recycling truck. At 6:30 this morning I heard the unmistakable fwap-fwap-fwap of a helicopter flying low overhead, and I was overjoyed. I knew the county was going to be spraying this area again this year, and I hoped they'd come sooner than they did last year. Last year's infestation of gypsy moth caterpillars was truly disgusting, and by the time the county sprayed they'd decimated some of my shrubbery. This year's infestation isn't as bad, but still gross, and just yesterday I noticed a couple of bushes that had been munched on. For the most part, though, the county was on top of it this time around. So I kept the dog in until the helicopter was long gone, and it was about an hour later that I started hauling stuff out onto the driveway for the sale. At around noon, when I started bringing the few unsold items back into the house, I noticed that everything was liberally sprinkled with tiny spots, as though a fine mist had settled everywhere and dried. I was puzzled for several minutes, until I realized it was the Bt--Bacillus Thuringiensis--the stuff they sprayed to kill the gypsy moths. Evidently the stuff is sprayed in such a fine mist that it takes hours to settle to the ground. So I, my dog, my house, are all contaminated in a big way by Bt, a bacterium similar enough to anthrax to be commonly used as an anthrax simulant in laboratory tests, haha, good times. Nah, I'm not worried. Saint and I have healthy immune systems. Anyway, Bt is unavoidable; it's part of the "bio background" that we live in. It's a jungle out there. http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/05/filthy_lucre.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/05/filthy_lucre.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Sat, 03 May 2008 16:45:10 -0500 At some time in the distant past a tsunami of paper broke over my house, filled it to the rafters, and then receded, leaving behind pools that filled every nook and cranny. Pools of bank statements, canceled checks, tax forms, pay stubs, insurance policies, disclaimers, declarations, bills and "This Is Not A Bill" notices. Owner's manuals, installation guides, guarantees. Magazines. I commence, today, to rake out the muck. Some of the magazines will be boxed and offered, free, at the neighborhood yard sale next Saturday, just in case some fool comes along who doesn't think he owns enough magazines, or who thinks he'll have time to read them all someday--the fantasy that has kept me from dumping a collection of "American Scholar" quarterlies that dates back fifteen years. "Architectural Digest"--a gift subscription from my mother--will fill a box, every issue of "Doubletake" will fill another, and "American Indian" a third. Come one, come all. http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/04/don_mask_bring_rake_and_shovel.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/04/don_mask_bring_rake_and_shovel.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:38:42 -0500 think. So, the first step will be to buy boxes at Staples. On the way over to Staples I'll stop by the thrift store and drop off seven large shopping bags full of clothes. It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate when you live in a place for sixteen years.]]> http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/04/reorganizingagain.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/04/reorganizingagain.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:42:45 -0500 ]]> http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/03/four_years_old_1.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/03/four_years_old_1.html Dog Blogging Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:07:01 -0500 gift. And the audience was spell-bound, and we were like my god-- I understand him, and we looked at each other wide-eyed and knew we were all thinking the same thing. As paranoid as I am about writing about my work, I have to tell you who he is: he's Dr. Vince Ortiz, a prof at Auburn University. Earlier in the week we'd all introduced ourselves and he realized how many of us weren't chemists, and he, he alone, decided to amend his presentation on the fly by using a white board to supplement the material on his powerpoint slides, to explain what he was doing for us non-chemists. He wasn't really animated; he didn't even smile. He used his hands a bit, but mostly he just spoke slowly, explaining things in simple terms. He talked about Schrödinger's Equation and how he was attempting to solve it computationally, and he talked about harmonic oscillators and hyper-surfaces and infinite sets of basis functions, and we were like why oh why couldn't he have been my chemistry professor in college and we all came away a whole lot smarter and knowing we'd witnessed something rare and wonderful. Only one speaker followed him. As this hapless fellow walked to the front of the conference room, someone in the group said "You're in trouble now that we all understand this stuff," and we all laughed.]]> http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/03/teaching_and_learning_1.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/03/teaching_and_learning_1.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:57:14 -0500 It's been a long time since I've had a long enough layover to get a meal between flights. TGIFriday's "Dragon Chicken" isn't too bad and I'm on my second glass of wine. The sauce is too sweet but as I said, I'm on my second glass of wine so what the hell. Unfortunately the long layover means I'll be getting home at around 1am. I decided yesterday to fly home tonight rather than wait til tomorrow morning, when I'd've had to drag myself out of bed at 4am to catch an early flight. Oh, I was in Albuquerque this morning, by the way. For a week of meetings that ended at noon today. The weather was beautiful all week, as it almost always is. During previous stays in Albuquerque I've chosen a hotel close to the airport, but not this time. I couldn't get a room near the airport at a reasonable rate (meaning the per diem rate I'll be reimbursed for no matter what I actually pay), so I ended up staying in the city, and I'm very glad I did. Finally, on this trip, I learned my way around Albuquerque. I learned the layout of the city after having been here maybe a dozen times over the past four years. I discovered a Whole Foods Market at the corner of Indian School and Carlisle, and in the future I plan to stay at the Residence Inn that's just off Carlisle, just north of I-40. The rooms all have kitchens and I hate eating alone in restaurants, most times. Yeah, I finally got my bearings in Albuquerque. I-40 runs east and west, I-25 north and south. Carlisle, San Mateo, Louisiana, all run north and south. Central runs east and west. I have a good sense of direction, and once I'd mapped the city out in my mind I could get pretty much anywhere I wanted to go, because the layout of the city is so simple. It's like New York that way, although New York is simpler yet. It's unlike Washington D.C., which is a nightmare that I can still get lost in, no problem. http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/03/tgifridays_dallasfortworth_air.html http://llandryn.net/blog/2008/03/tgifridays_dallasfortworth_air.html Monkey at the keyboard (random crap) Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:32:37 -0500