Royal Wedding finale is best finale. Seriously, I was wowed throughout the episode. The songs were okay, but the plot was very interesting. Celestia actually fought someone! And Cadance is adorable. Also, Jaller is best Captain of the Guard, be he pony or Matoran.
My elementary-school self is jumping with joy.
One of the ways I've occupied myself this summer was by trying to reconstruct one of the old LEGO Pirate ships, the Black Seas Barracuda. However, I wanted to do it with a twist. I've always loved the sails of the Skull's Eye Schooner, but the yellow/black/white motif of the Barracuda was always my preferred color scheme. Therefore I opted for a mixture of the two.
The sails are, alas, not genuine, but printed sheets of paper cut appropria
As the fates would have it, the day after my birthday I hopped on a plane and went to a physics conference. I'm now sitting here in my lovely hotel room waiting for today's poster session at which I am presenting a poster on my research thus far. It involves stuff from my first published paper and some current "in the works" calculations that I'm doing to help our analysis along. The talks up to this point have completely left me in the dust, so I'm hoping there will be discussion during the p
And I likes it! Thankee to Than and Watashi Wa. Also, an awesomely amazing photo autographed by Yakko Warner/Pinky himself, Rob Paulsen, came in the mail today. I am quite happy.
New comic is up! It covers the subject of learning new things. Now, I have a question to pose to you. My friends were talking about being productive with their evenings (both are fellow physics grad students), and I had mentioned that I had felt really productive lately due to the fact that I made two reviews (one of which no one has commented in yet. show it some love!) and finished my latest comic. Then they replied, "I wouldn't really call that productive; you just do that for fun." To be
So, I know it's been a few weeks since the awesomeness that was BrickFair, VA, 2013, but I've finally gotten around to editing the pictures of the stuff I managed to get my hands on at that wonderful convention. My loot includes A pin A BrickFair brick (It's actually three bricks stacked on top of each other, but whatever.) A yellow prototype Shadow Leech! (Thanks, Black Six!) A yellow 1980s space guy. Two minifigs (Build-your-own) A bag of BIONICLE pieces for Tekulo KopakaKurahk's loot
Haldo, everypeoples! I just wanted to check in (as I haven't posted in well over a month). The semester is wrapping up pretty well. I've started writing a paper to published this summer (!) and have been deep in spectrum assignment land. I also have some friends getting married at the end of the month and will be playing trumpet for their wedding with two of my friends. After that happens, I'm going to a conference to give a talk on my research (a first!). So, yeah, a lot of exciting stuff
So, I purchased a lovely Zelda-edition 3DS with some money I got for Christmas and some out of my own pocket after the festive holiday. I have to say, it is awesome. Playing the classic game that got me into the Zelda series in 3D is fun, and due to the fact that I am used to 3D stereogram images the 3D bothers my eyes minimally. Actually, I think OoT is a great game to do in 3D, because there are many scenes that the 3D adds to well (such as Navi's flight at the beginning, establishing shots
"The proportionality factor σ (not to be confused with surface charge) is an empirical constant that varies from one material to another; it's called the conductivity of the medium. Actually, the handbooks usually list the reciprocal of σ, called the resistivity: ρ = 1/σ (not to be confused with charge density—I'm sorry, but we're running out of Greek letters, and this is the standard notation)." This is the man who allegedly can teach physics to gerbils. I wish I could take a class with him
http://youtu.be/bxjWNJU8rNE When I was in college I had the privilege of performing many beautiful pieces in both choir and band. While I got to sing Eric Whitacre's "Hope, Faith, Life, Love" and play trumpet in his instrumental piece "October," I never did get to sing this beautiful piece. I absolutely love his suspensions and cluster chords. They give it a real ethereal quality, and it's beautiful.
This evening, KK and I will embark on an epic quest to return home via Greyhound bus. Neither of us has ever partaken in such an adventure, so it will probably be full of intrigue, drool, and snorts due to the fact that we leave after midnight. 'Twill be interesting indeed. In other news, scattering theory is still something that eludes me. This is funny, because one of my research projects sort of uses scattering theory as an approximation technique. I get it there, but not when it comes to G
Direct detection of gravitational waves has been confirmed! Another milestone for physics! Also, Einstein was right again, for those of you keeping track at home. Dangit, Einstein.
The other day I decided to look at my comics from start to finish to remind myself of where I started and how far I've come to get to the comics I have today, and I have determined the following. I sucked in the beginning. I mean, I was awful! Did I really actually think some of those comics were post-worthy? Holy Mukau! Seriously, go over to my topic and read the first couple comics. Then, cry in a corner. For several hours. That's what I did. In unrelated news, I've been toying with the
Today I went to my local LEGO Store to plunder some Series 8 Minifigures. I reviewed the 8 Series 8 minifigs (clever, ain't I?) over here, so check it out for pics and entertaining descriptions. I posted a teaser below: Also, while at the LEGO Store, I noticed some new sets. Remember the recent beach set that contained the Hula Girl, Surfer, and Surfer Girl from the Series Minifigures? Well, two new similar sets are now in the LEGO store, and I snapped a quick pic of them. Click for
My Classical Mechanics professor quoted someone in class the other day: "The maturation of a physics student involves solving the harmonic oscillator over and over again throughout his/her career." (or something to that effect) So, what is the harmonic oscillator? Otherwise known as the simple harmonic oscillator, it is the physical situation in which a particle is subject to a force whose strength is proportional to the displacement from equilibrium of said particle, known as Hooke's Law, or
So, I've been doing various things in the world of Pokémon recently. I obtained a Squirtle on Wonder Trade (that was awesome), a Froakie from Spain, various forms of Vivillon, a Riolu from Japan (リオル), and a Rotom (8D) from Japan (ロトム). I'm hoping to try the Masuda method to get a shiny Riolu, because shiny Lucario is awesome (and yellow). Also, I caught a shiny Ditto in Pokémon Village. Luckiest chain ever (I definitely did not get a chain of 40...).
You may have learned once that classical mechanics all stems from Newton's laws of motion, and while that is true, it is not necessarily the best way to solve a given physical problem. Often when we look at a physical system, we take note of certain physical parameters: energy, momentum, and position. However, these can be more generalized to fit the physical situation in question better. This is where Lagrange comes in; he thought of a new way to formulate mechanics. Instead of looking at the t
I know most of you aren't physicists, but it's very important to me that physics education be designed to effectively teach physics to any and all audiences. After all, if you want people to have some inkling as to what you do, you want to be able to come up with a way to explain the necessities without getting bogged down in all the details. When you do this, it prevents the person you talk to from feeling like a moron and also allows you to talk about yourself and what you do to someone who
