Yesterday I received two separately packaged green lettuce sea slugs, Elysia spp., from LiveAquaria.com. It’s a good thing they were separate. One was dead, and the water was greenish and smelled through the bag. The other one seemed OK.
The surviving lettuce sea slug (Elysia spp.) from LiveAquaria.com
I received the second Aquatop MR-20 Multimedia Reactor an hour ago and set it up with Alan’s 20 gallon tank temporarily housing my animals. I decided to use a few teaspoons of each of the following:
I put …
I designed and built an aquarium stand this past week as my first foray into woodworking, and it turned out well. I used about $60 in wood and other materials. I’m now thinking about what else I should build!
The finished aquarium stand with adjustable shelves. I designed and built it from scratch as my first foray into woodworking. Despite running out of stain, I am quite pleased with it!
Since I decided to start a saltwater tank a few days ago, I’ve been researching supplies and equipment constantly. There are so many options before even considering the vast species of corals, fish and other animals!
spectrum diagram from unitednuclear.com
Alan started keeping a saltwater aquarium earlier this year, and since I’ve been living with it for the past two months, I’ve become fascinated with reefkeeping. I am planning to start my own once I move to my next apartment in January. This leaves me plenty of time to obsessively research the many aspects of marine life.
Sea apple at 6th Ave Aquarium and Flowers
I don’t know what came over me the other day, but I looked at the popular apps for macOS Sierra, and I downloaded the game 2048. It looked simple and thus I thought it would be a quick diversion. Oops.
2048-4x4a.png
I use the dark menu bar on my machines running macOS Sierra, but some app icons are hard to see. I finally bothered to search for a solution, and it was quite easy.
My dark menu bar before fixing the first and sixth app icons
About six weeks ago I got a post office box. Soon after that I signed up for “street addressing“, a service provided by my post office involving an alternative address format that somewhat disguises that I have a PO box. I also now get delivery notifications for pieces of mail sent to my box.
This week I’ve have done much less studying for the GRE than I hoped given I am taking the test in four days. Tuesday I thought I would tune out the election coverage till later in the night when I hoped to see confirmed all the media’s predictions Hillary Clinton would be elected. But none of that went according to plan.
Within just two days, the petition to the Electoral College was signed more times than any petition in the site's history.
Since I am in between apartments, I got a post office box to avoid changing my address everywhere for a short period, and to avoid cluttering my friend’s mailbox with my crap. I was then able to set up forwarding from my old address to the PO box. I tried changing my address directly with all my credit card companies and banks, but only some of them allowed a PO box.
Another year passed too quickly, leaving behind good intentions and hopes and dreams. I am starting to understand all I can reasonably hope for in a year is a slightly greater fraction of my hopes will be realized. But I know one day this hope too will fail me. I hope in the meantime I can build the strength and wisdom to weather the storm.
Saturday Sunset
Everyone who spends a week in Black Rock City develops a relationship with the porta potties. Lack of standard toilets is not normally a highlight of outdoor festivals, and thus it is easy to react negatively to this plight. With experience you recognize there are other ways to think, and as with many relationships, truth manifests through highs and lows; moments of relief, disdain, and sometimes pain; feelings of prison, and other times of sanctuary. Smelling freedom requires first letting go – of yourself, everything you hold on to, everything inside you. Keeping it all bottled up only leads to pain. Your satisfaction is commensurate with your contribution.
People love to express themselves in the toilets.
Today I reported for jury duty for my first time, but was not chosen to serve. Maybe I’ll have better luck next year, and at least it got me out of the house!
20160921-scan-jury-duty-small.jpg
Back in April, I ordered a large magnet to have some fun. I intended to make some sort of art project using pieces of metal suspended by thin strings, but before I got that far, the magnet ended up as a centerpiece on our dining table for most of the year.
Iron filings on mirror on neodymium magnet
This entry is simply documentation of a phenomenon that might be of interest to future or past historians.
You’d think after years of collective experience, companies relying on crowd funding would get better at their shipping claims. The KANOA earphones I ordered in May were promised around July, then pushed to August, then September, and now October or November. I hoped to have them before the San Francisco Marathon and then before the Burning Man 50K. Now Apple’s launching the AirPods and will probably ship them before I get the KANOA set. Also I ordered a laser projector on Indiegogo, but it was canceled altogether apparently due to issues shipping to the United States. At least I supposedly got a refund on that!
While eating my tostada salad from The Little Chihuahua, I watched Celeste Headlee’s TED talk “10 ways to have a better conversation”. Following are the ten points and some notes and thoughts.
[youtube R1vskiVDwl4]
I try to launch an app by starting to type its name, and sometimes it initially shows up in the list, but then disappears. The name still prefills, but hitting return key has no effect. I must wait some seconds for the app list to populate again and let me launch the app.
I know now I cannot sleep. I probably knew before, but I tried getting lost in music, vaguely hoping my consciousness be released. Trying to get lost is something I am not well equipped to handle, at any rate. I know exactly where I am. The vibrations in my earphones, captivating as they seem, somehow serve only to bring my thoughts into sharper focus. I can no longer contain my mind; the thoughts burst out, and I must write, lest I lose all hope of honoring them, of honoring myself. I am being haunted by the breaking heart of the woman who used to own my house, and I think that is why I must depart.
Early Monday morning, we got underway just a little late and joined the thousands of others fleeing the city. Our timing was unlucky, and I had to fight tiredness and my bowels while driving seven hours before the first toilets. The traffic also meant Dave and Matt would not be able to join us for food, and they barely made it to Salt Lake City in time for Matt’s flight. The rest of us had a huge lunch near Reno, Nevada, and thus I was satiated for the final nine hours of driving while Erik and Phillip mostly slept.
This entry is lacking details of the final days, and I hope to add more.
Exodus
The Sunday ritual was the same as every year: I rose late, packed my things while periodically saying goodbye to those who had already finished, ate, and then proceeded to The Temple to watch it burn. I wrote about the temple my first year, so this time I will content myself to describe the day’s events briefly and share some photos.
After roughly 40 minutes, it was determined the fire had cooled enough to let those who dared approach the fire. No longer did Black Rock Rangers or firefighters restrain the curious. That duty was now served by only the raw heat.
Saturday I mostly chilled at camp in preparation for the highlight of the week, the burning of The Man. The temperature continued its weeklong decline, but I was prepared this year with many coats! Some dust storms delayed the burn almost an hour, but that was fine as the storms delayed all of us as well. Most of our camp watched the burn together, and then we mostly danced at art cars nearby, including Dancetronauts. Due to poor planning, I was somewhat more sober than expected, but I still managed to go out for a second round with Erik and Phillip, and we stayed out dancing past sunrise. It was tiring, but I am glad I did it once this year.
Crazy desert people dancing at 5:22 a.m. at the Mayan Warrior. What a scene!
Friday I explored area neighborhoods with Steven, and we were later joined by Eric and Mike. I documented some interesting structures and collected ideas for next year. I made a quick trek to the playa before sunset to try to photograph some of the art before it was too late, and on the way back tickled a curiosity that nevertheless went unsatisfied. I went out with most of the camp, which was finally complete with the arrival of Brett and Scott and others. It was a bit of a strange night, as I didn’t feel terribly energetic, but I felt good and wanted to be with friends. Once most of us returned to camp a few hours after midnight, I made use of my speaker system to play some tracks I collected over the year. Those hours listening to music with friends around the campfire ended up being some of my most satisfying hours in days.
Exploring Friday
Thursday evening, we went out much as we did Tuesday. We were all hopelessly slow to mobilize again and again, but I have come to appreciate those dynamics at Burning Man. That place is endlessly amazing, but it also teaches you to be self satisfied and to enjoy each unexpected moment. Just after we were finally moving, I was almost “condemned” to a night on my own when my bike malfunctioned. Dave stopped to help, and we got lucky the group hadn’t gotten too far. Not long after that, my yurt group ended up separated anyway, so we resolved to enjoy the night on our own. Joy can be an elusive thing, though. I was not sure the music differed much from Tuesday’s, but two of us were not enjoying it and eventually gave up searching. I still had a good time being on the playa and being with friends, despite injuring my hand! After they all retired for the night, some loneliness struck again and propelled me out into the desert once more. I returned still solo, not terribly disappointed but mostly just tired.
This is Helios by Kate Raudenbush. I had trouble getting it in focus since I was dancing on a giant sheep.
After a low key Wednesday, Thursday was quite packed. As with Tuesday, I felt it broke naturally into two parts. We struggled to coordinate our activities given our various whims, and thus it was only after quite a few delays that I went out in search of friends whose addresses I had written down before coming. I only ended up finding my friend Luke, whom I met in Singapore last year, but I was glad I did, for I was apparently the one who introduced him to Burning Man and much of his inspiration for coming. Then I experienced my first moment of losing my group, though it didn’t last long. Overall I had a nice daytime adventure with Dave, Matt and Steven checking out the catacomb, an open mic, a tea house, a rowdy parade and more.
Always love a desert ship.
I skipped the annual naked bar crawl Wednesday morning. The race no longer conflicted as in previous years, but having run it, I was less enthusiastic about the bar crawl than I imagined I would be. I relaxed at camp for the afternoon, and Dave arrived with Matt in the evening. With Erik and Phillip, we all went out for a sober night out exploring. We checked out the guild workshops around The Man before seeing some of the more prominent art – Firmament, Sonic Runway, the lighthouses – and briefly visiting The Temple. I had a good time, but also felt my first slight longing for a partner with whom to share this adventure.
As we biked toward Esplanade, we passed Panorama and decided to go up and have a look. I thought it might be more interesting for Matt to first see Esplanade on the ground before going up and seeing it all, but it was still breathtaking either way!
Tuesday night was possibly the best night of my week, at least for dancing. This was unexpected since I ran the Burning Man 50K Ultramarathon that morning and was quite exhausted by afternoon. I stayed in working on my lights while the group went out for the evening, but they came back around 21:00, at which point I decided to join. I loved the music everywhere we went, and I loved everyone in the group!
By 3 a.m. we made it to the Mayan Warrior, an apparent goal set when we left camp. I had been enjoying all the music along the way, but I was glad the others were happy.
There was no question in my mind I would attempt it a third time, but still I was nervous in the weeks before. I’m happy to report I did not die before finishing the Burning Man 50K Ultramarathon! It took me 6 hours, 4 minutes, and I placed 74 out of 160 who completed the race. I even managed to throw together a video, below. Thank you to Cherie and the camp Pink Lightning for organizing the race again!
Monday I went out for what turned out to be my only day drinking adventure of the week. I took it easy and went to bed early in hopes of being rested for the 50K race the following morning.
We had a pretty nice sunset Monday evening, and I tried to go to sleep soon after so I could be somewhat rested for the 50K race I had to head to at 4:30 a.m. the next morning.
After our long journey to Burning Man Saturday, I woke late and did little Sunday. I think I’ve learned to be OK with that, which itself has been a long journey.
We planned to leave Saturday before noon and have plenty of time to arrive in Black Rock City when the gate opened at midnight. Packing, of course, took longer than I hoped it would. We actually left four hours late, but most of the journey was remarkably smoother than the previous few years, and for a while I thought we would only be a little late. I was wrong. After being on the road 14 hours, we set up camp after sunrise. As a wonderful bonus, we managed to camp with friends and mark off plenty of space for others to join later.
Loading the vehicle was a multihour process of Erik bringing me things, Erik skipping more and more things fearing there will not be room for necessities, me noticing things are missing and getting them myself and magically finding more space on the roof.
Two winters ago I bought a faux fur coat at a secondhand store The Retique in Milwaukee. I intended to take it to Burning Man in case it got cold. And it did, but I forgot the coat. This year I intend to not forget it, and I also managed to spend some time putting lights into it today. I hope to improve it, but I am documenting it now lest I never get back to this.
Sound reactive fur coat hanging up
13:00
Assess string LED lights and the big fur coat.
14:00
Start attaching LEDs to big fur coat.
18:00
Wiring LEDs is done. Now eating some dinner (curry and rice Yizhen made me, some spinach Yizhen bought for me, and some chicken I made from Derek …
I haven’t been very social this year, spending most of my time at home. While spending some time with a friend, I pondered posting a question to Facebook and seeing if anyone would respond. I wrote:
For those who want to get to know each other and have the time, please answer:
What do you try to do every day?
I have a new inflamed tastebud, but thankfully the one I got yesterday is mostly better now. I haven’t had any for a while (weeks? months?), but I do remember having three at once sometime this year. I had been getting them somewhat frequently, but they did definitely heal, so I was at least pretty sure it was due to something I did periodically, not every day. Is it spicy food? I’m not sure, but that’s what I tell myself.
10:00
Woke up, late, and still a bit tired.
11:20
Called to get food card reactivated. Have more than $400 to use, thankfully. Went to Falletti for groceries while Alan got coffee at Oak Cafe. I spent $94 on mostly vegetables, milk and some fermented things, aiming to …
8:06
Forcing myself to get up at the time I set my Fitbit to vibrate (8:00 and then 8:06 and 8:09). I used to set the Fitbit and my phone, but I realized last night I could just set multiple Fitbit alarms (necessary since it does …
I just realized (in July 2017) I forgot to finish posting this entry last year. That’s a bit of a shame, as it was my best time (3:58:09) and I was now hoping to remember a bit about how I prepared. The photos will have to suffice!
Obligatory mid marathon Golden Gate Bridge selfie.
Facebook app notifications in Android 6.0 are controlled in either of two places, at the system level or from within the app. Totally disabling the notifications can be done in either place, while disabling only some types of notifications must be done within the app.
I created this entry since I was sending my dad instructions anyway.
I received a request from Coinbase to provide more personal information. While I still hope bitcoin replaces much of our current payments system, I must admit I am at least not being interrogated by my bank regarding the use of my account.
The past six weeks have flown by, and I don’t feel I have accomplished very much. I need to improve, stat!
Note: I started writing this entry at the end of Week 6, in early June. I then lost the text and several more weeks passed, so I wrote a (brief) new version, Scorecard: year 2, weeks 1–10. The below text wasn’t supposed to be final, but I’m just posting it as is.
I’ve done a horrible job promptly completing my weekly reviews in conjunction with my second “12 Week Year“, but I have not given up. This is going to be a cursory attempt at covering the last 10 weeks, not only because 10 weeks is a long time to remember all the details for, but also because I seem to have lost (Update: now found) what of this entry I had started writing a few weeks ago. Sometimes doing thing over results in better work, but I find that isn’t the case when I don’t want to be doing the work in the first place. Ideally I want to spend more time reviewing, but I’m a bit behind as it is.
Scores through Week 10 of Year 2
A few weeks ago, when configuring my server to host my mom’s new business website, I finally looked into Let’s Encrypt and decided to go with it. The service provides an automated way to install and update SSL certificates for HTTPS website hosting. Previously I had been using the free-ish certificates from StartCom.
I had trouble getting out of bed this morning, as I planned to go for an 18 mile run, but wanted to wait till I pooped. I had some Greek yogurt and honey, and then a granola bar, and after a couple of hours, I still couldn’t go.
I …
To improve the readability of the body text in my posts, I use Markdown as much as possible. When uploading and inserting images using Movable Type’s editor, the result is a jumble of image tags all on one line containing extra information I don’t need. I finally took 10 minutes to fix this, making it output Markdown instead.
A few weeks ago, Tyler told me to look out for some contact lenses that would be delivered here, for he desperately needed them for his last month living in Europe. I was glad to be able to help, but it didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped.
The United Kingdom wanted a piece of this action and put a "Customs Fee to Pay" sticker on the package.
A month ago I wrote a sort of history of my years of friendship with someone suffering with manic bipolar disorder. I concluded “Mania de Mayo” with a comment on my tiredness and a hopefully sarcastic comment about the type of friend I am. Not much good has happened since then regarding my friend, it seems to me, and his new friends along with some old are now organizing for a possible impending psychotic episode.
I never cared to have display ads on my website, as it doesn’t cost very much in server power and mostly serves as my own personal archive. Also, I only get a few thousand page views a month. That’s more than I would guess an inconsistent blog with no target audience would get, but certainly not enough to make much money on ads. I’m going to try it out, though, mostly just to see how many pennies it yields.
I installed Google AdSense ads on my blog." class="mt-image-none" height="1389
As explained in the first entry, I bought a microscope mostly so I could look for tardigrades, aka water bears, and hopefully make lovely videos of them. Within hours of getting my scope set up, I managed to find some!
Isolated tardigrade: My first attempt at finding tardigrades and putting them on a slide, using an OMAX M837ZL microscope. This is using a 40X objective and a 14MP camera at the smallest video setting, 1024x822, for faster frame rate.
The microscope I bought arrived, and I spent a day getting familiar with it and the lenses. I was generally pleased, but ended up buying a bunch of new objectives and condensers to see if I could get better images. This post is regarding the initial purchase except the images at the end featuring the darkfield condenser.
First test of the OMAX M837ZL microscope, looking at some local moss associated cells.
It took me a while to locate the manual for my new microscope. I was not surprised to have trouble since the lone Amazon review warned of no manual being provided and a broken link, but it was more difficult than I thought it would be to find the manual online.
My OMAX M837ZL microscope came with a broken CD, but luckily I was still able to get the files off.
As an early birthday present to myself, I bought a microscope despite many other priorities. I’ve spent a few days using it over the past two weeks, and while I have mixed feelings, I don’t regret the purchase.
While waiting for the microscope to be delivered, I searched for moss in the park that overlooks my house from above.
I enjoyed reading a recent Bloomberg article, “How Intel Makes a Chip“. The comparison of processors versus airliners was eye opening, and I loved some of the jargon used within Intel.
I’ve been getting acquainted with my new microscope and its digital camera software. I initially decided to buy a microscope based mostly on the USB camera resolution finally exceeding a few megapixels without costing thousands of dollars. After these tests, it looks like I may end up not using the USB camera much after all, due to difficulty getting the colors right. Thankfully I decided to try a Nikon SLR adapter, as photos through that look much better!
Stage micrometer viewed through a Meiji plan 40X NA0.65 (spring) 160/0.17 objective lit through an OMAX dry brightfield Abbe NA1.25 condenser captured by a Nikon D800 with AmScope 2X SLR camera adapter
While I haven’t found a great solution for optical digital surround sound on OS X, I’m accepting my current setup. Using an external sound card device, I am feeding three separate audio cables into my surround speakers, and everything seems to work reasonably well now.
In my endless endeavor to optimize my data storage scheme, I changed my Drobo 5D‘s drive redundancy setting from dual to single, such that I would only be able to sustain one drive failure, but I would gain an extra six terabytes of space. The free space has fallen below 20 percent, and I’ve ready reports of Drobos becoming incredibly slow once past three quarters full. I also had some issues connecting Drobo to Gmail, but got it working using Port 587 and checking the SSL box, despite this being against Google’s documentation.
After troubleshooting surround sound on OS X El Capitan all week, I bought a USB digital audio adapter in hopes of circumventing the problems using the digital audio port on my motherboard. Well, those hopes have been dashed! It seems I can only reliably get surround sound through the Micro II using the annoying Plex Home Theater app, which is exactly the situation with my onboard optical port. Oh well!
Update: I’ve settled on a solution using the Creative SB1560 and three audio cables, giving up on optical digital audio.
This week I’ve been trying to get true surround sound from my desktop’s optical digital port. I haven’t been totally successful yet, but I do have a much better understanding of audio formats and channels and and technologies involved. Using Windows, everything works splendidly, but I’m primarily running OS X El Capitan. Needless to say, it’s been frustrating! I currently can only get reliable DTS surround sound using the Plex Home Theater app, but that’s clunky and won’t play any video file like VLC player.
I haven’t written much for a few weeks, but I’m still here. I’ve mostly been trying to focus on the programming projects and not worry about the brain exercises and other tasks, hoping this would be temporary, and soon I could get back to progressing on everything. But of course I have had diversions, both intentional and unexpected. This month my mind has been on relationships. First, romantic ones, and then for the past ten days, on a friend in need. It is on the latter I now write.
The following screenshots were taken within 10 seconds of each other after restarting the AirPort Utility app.
Sometimes launching OS X's AirPort Utility from a wired computer on the network shows a correct layout.
Other times the layout is squashed and therefore I don't have much confidence it's right even when it doesn't look squashed.
My dad shares a lot of posts on Facebook, on a variety of topics. Many are political or gun related, and sometimes the comments are interesting. This was a recent one posted by Tess Taylor on April 23 at 12:26pm PT:
tess_taylor_share.png" class="mt-image-none" height="1304
I started using Runkeeper to track my runs in July 2010, and soon after I started paying $19.99 per year to support the service. The additional features for the money were limited, basically boiling down to some extra charts and a live run feature where others can see your run in real time. This wasn’t as cool as it could be, or even as similar features from competitors. I’ve seen friends using a Nike app, I think, where it would post to Facebook at the start of a run, and the phone would read comments and cheers as friends interacted with the post. As far as I know, Runkeeper never did anything like that. And I’m not sure I would have used it anyway.
Today I received a newsletter from Mapbox that linked to a tutorial for JavaScript based heatmaps. It looks pretty cool, and I wondered how it might look used to plot runs.
I wrote in November about Runkeeper heatmaps and a method to generate images from run data on a computer …
Two of my roommates let me know Friday the Internet sucked in the kitchen. I knew this used to be the case, and I suspected our metal framed kitchen table of causing issues, but I thought it was solved.
I use voice transcription instead of typing quite a bit, and I have for a few years. Often I don’t even bother correcting it, or I only use it for shorter sentences so I can easily see problems and fix them. But I’m trying to use it more …
We’ve had some network issues lately, so I dug out one of the Raspberry Pi Model Bs I got for free from Adafruit with my first couple of orders in September 2013. I then set it up to do network monitoring using Smokeping. Since it takes 10 or 20 seconds to generate the graphs, I switched to a master-slave setup where the graphs could be generated on my web server, but the measurements taken from the Raspberry Pi on my home network.
Since my first programming book 15 years ago, I remember the convention of using extra spaces to align the equal signs in lines of variable assignments. This has been pretty standard in most of the languages I’ve used over the years. It’s not a big deal, but it’s something I do instinctively. I struggle much more with other spacing and indentation issues, and seeking guidance, I read Python’s PEP8. And I’m not sure I like with what I found.
This is just a quick note for future reference. A few friends shared the Medium piece “On Becoming Anti-Bernie” (PDF) by Robin Alperstein. I only read the first few pages, but that much of it basically reflects my sentiment: I love that Bernie is proving many Americans have a strong …
Today I woke up later than hoped as usual, but not super late: 10:30ish. Brad broke up and went to work before 8, and I hope to pick it up at that time also, but when I finally went to bed around 2 I was still quite awake and …
A few weeks ago I got addicted to installing SmartThings in my house, and I wrote of my initial woes getting that set up. This is just to say I managed to get mostly everything working as desired, mostly using the default provided “SmartApps”. I am still having consistent problems …
Three months ago, randomly read a book called “The 12 Week Year,” and I decided to start using the system to make sure my time away from work wasn’t wasted, and hopefully establish some routines that would make it easier to be efficient and productive. While I stuck with it in general, I didn’t take it seriously enough to see the major benefits I hoped for. It still helped me be more accountable and better understand my failings, so I will continue with it. I probably need some adjustments; maybe writing this will help.
The final week of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 52.3%. Last week I scored 52.2%.
Year 1, Week 12
Again I didn’t stick to my planned schedule well, but I felt reasonably good this past week despite ballooning credit card debt!
I’ve noticed and commented on this many times, so it should probably be documented so I can remember how hard life was in 2016. The customer answers to product questions on Amazon are mostly useless, thanks to a process flaw on Amazon’s part.
The eleventh week of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 52.2%. The previous two weeks, I scored 43.3% and 72.7%.
Soon after I moved in here last year, there were a number of suspicious incidents in the shared garage. I’m told a rental car was stolen and later found by police, and another time a rummager took some items, including keys to some motorcycles. At least one of the incidents did not involve the door being accidentally left open, but we weren’t sure if they had a key or taped a lock open or something.
Anyway, it seemed some more theft might be imminent, so Paul bought a Nest camera and installed it in the garage. It’s worked pretty well, sending notifications to all our phones on activity in the garage. There are false notifications due to light changes from vehicles driving by, but it’s alerted me to the door being left open many times. One such time, we got the alert in the middle of the night and found a video of someone poking around. He took a few things, but we’re not sure what exactly.
One third of four multiplied by three is not four, according to the OS X calculator. I know this quirk is due to behind the scenes floating point arithmetic, but it’s interesting Apple hasn’t found a way to cosmetically fix this considering this calculator might be the most commonly used one in the world!
4/3*3=3.9999999999
I’ve only ready a few stories on the Apple controversy, but I’m increasingly anxious, hoping civil liberties prevail. This is a bit of a journal entry combined with some comments I want to remember, so I’ll give a bit of background in case I read this in …
Periodically timing myself playing the card game Set.
Finding 10 sets: Count 13x3 cards, starting timing before laying out 12 cards, stop timing after first set found after only 12 cards remain table. If 1 minute passes without set, add three cards.
2016-03-16: 13:40, 5:57, 13:20, 6 …
Week 8 of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 50.4%. This is about the same as last week.
Last month, before I realized there was going to be a thousand GOP and Democratic debates, I was still tuning in to each one, though often late, as they caught me off guard. During the Feb. 6 GOP debate, I actually empathized with Marco Rubio, as several times he seemed to nearly shed tears.
Today, Rubio dropped out of GOP nomination race, finally. Not that Trump or Cruz are any better ideologically, but they at least seem more likely to be able to handle the pressure of the job.
“Government Surveillance” is scary, and a great episode of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”. The show, from last March, features man on the street evidence Americans are poorly informed about surveillance, as well as an interview with Snowden in which Oliver portrays the government programs in the context of dick pics. This perspective seems to turn the issue from something Americans care little about to something deeply personal and repulsive. (And it isn’t the sending of the dick pics that is repulsive.)
Oliver may have helped build momentum behind this issue by making it personal, but it was still somewhat removed since we don’t know of many specific cases. Now that Apple is very publicly fighting the government on a specific case, I hope more people see the light and unite for civil liberties.
Airport full body scanners see all, but the government says it doesn't keep a copy, just in case.
I signed up for Comcast’s XFINITY Internet service this week, despite a deep seated aversion to contributing to the reign of a giant monopoly. Time will tell if I can live with the decision, but so far, it’s not looking so good. They have already done a hard pull on my credit report illegally, as I did not consent to it and they explicitly told me no such pull would be done since I was paying a $100 deposit. Additionally, the speeds are not as advertised. My attempts so far to deal with both these issues have wasted a lot of time and have been unsuccessful.
Week 7 of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 50.1%. This is much worse than last week.
I’ve always been perplexed by the small amount of media coverage about the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake. I guess after years of consistent incidents and higher radiation recordings than ever before, it ceases to qualify as “news”, but the repercussions seem far reaching and …
I began studying Japanese vocab and characters through WaniKani in May 2014, a few months after I moved to Japan. After five months, I wrote about my struggles to get caught up with the program due to intentionally advancing through the levels as quickly as possible to maximize my benefit …
I finally got a fast Fourier transform working on an Arduino Due! This is not exactly a final product but just a documentation of progress. I am working my way toward beat detection, but am still getting a better feel for FFT processing and observing different types of music and beats. Below is some information about how I got up to speed, and at the end are videos of where I am now.
Listening to Superlove by Avicii and visualizing it with the free iSpectrum app" class="mt-image-none" height="1820
Week 6 of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 85.8%. This is much better than the last two weeks, and might be my best week yet depending how you look at it.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with or thinking about my ex these past few months, so perhaps it isn’t so strange I’ve felt myself falling more and more for him, despite having broken up nearly a year and a half ago.
The fifth week of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 56.5%. This is 4.3% lower than last week, which itself was 17.6% lower than the week before‘s 78.4%.
I’m just starting to get my feet wet with the Arduino Due, which apparently can read from analog input a hell of a lot faster than the FLORA I have been using for sound reactive projects.
In a recent journal entry I said I would post more details on the lights I’m using in my apartment. I wanted to spend some more time on the program itself first, but the weekend disappeared too quickly, so that will be an ongoing process. For now, here are some parts lists and information on setting up. I’ll also try to make a similar post for my rainbow spirit hood.
Room lights diagram. Note the NeoPixels image has the data and +5V switched. The data is actually between the ground and voltage." class="mt-image-none" height="2033
The Apple OS X Messages app stores files sent and received in a folder with a structure that doesn’t lend well to browsing. If you want to separately back up the family photos and videos received via iMessage on your computer, you can use some ideas here to help.
OSX Messages attachments folder" class="mt-image-none" height="602
The third week of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 78.4%. This is 20.3% higher than last week‘s 58.1%.
The super cool lights I set up in my Tokyo apartment made the journey back to the United States, but they’ve been incapacitated after I was tinkering and then got slammed with work for months. I finally sat down to organize some of the code and get the sound reactivity back, and it’s better than ever!
Hardware details in a separate post.
Yesterday I watched the last Democratic and GOP debates, the first such viewing on my part this cycle. It was quite interesting, but I’m not going to go into all that now. This post is just to say, after watching the final GOP debate today, I remembered The Political Compass, a cool website with a tool that graphs you not just on an economic left-right scale, but a social authoritarian-libertarian scale.
Yesterday I watched the last Democratic and GOP debates, the first such viewing on my part this cycle. It was quite interesting, but I'm not going to go into all that now. This post is just to say, after watching the final GOP debate today, I remembered The Political Compass, a cool website with a tool that graphs you not just on an economic left-right scale, but a social authoritarian-libertarian scale.
My political orientation as of January 2016
While I was looking for some old political test results in my files, I stumbled across a font I made of my handwriting in high school. The filename is charlie2006.ttf, though I seem to remember making the font earlier than that. Perhaps I made two. Making that font using some program I don’t remember took many hours of painstaking curve plotting and adjustments, but I figured there might be an easier way now. And sure enough, Google showed me myscriptfont.com.
The automated handwriting font creator from myscriptfont.com is slick, but I needed to redo my scans a few times to make corrections for thickness and more.
In reading the introduction to the Deep Learning book by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville, I came across the concept “distributed representation.” This idea struck me as parallel to the depiction of genetics in Richard Dawkins’s 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
Figure 2 from: Asgari E, Mofrad MRK (2015) ContinuousDistributed Representation of Biological Sequencesfor Deep Proteomics and Genomics. PLoS ONE 10 (11): e0141287.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0141287" class="mt-image-none" height="602
After an hourlong run and finishing my leftover tostada salad from The Little Chihuahua this afternoon, I noticed out the kitchen window a helicopter flying fairly low over the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco. I didn’t think much of it till I heard it again, and again.
A twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter, operated by the Remote Sensing Laboratory Aerial Measuring System from Nellis Air Force Base, heads west over San Francisco Monday, February 1, at 3:37 p.m.
The second week of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 58.1%. This is 5.9% lower than last week‘s 64.0%.
The main factors in the lower score were my self imposed oversleeping penalty of 7.8% (calculated based on Fitbit reported waking times …
Deciding how to fix health care is hard enough. But when huge problems I didn’t even know were problems come to light, it makes me wonder how we can ever hope to change. Then again, every problem is a solution waiting for someone to take charge.
In this case, drug shortages could be studied and solved through smart tracking software run by a national health organization or on a smaller scale within a hospital system.
In the made prep for Burning Man 2014, I went in with more knowledge than I had the year prior; I knew I needed lights. Now I have an ongoing project that is an exercise in programming and attempted durability.
The first week of my first 12 week year is over, and I scored 64.0%. More on that in a bit.
I initially scheduled consistent, solid blocks every day of the week, including the weekends, figuring my routines would get better established if I didn’t take days off. Since I spent much of this week engrossed in microbiome research, I really needed to stretch my biochemistry neurons for the first time in years. Even though that work only totaled about 20 hours, it was somewhat exhausting. I therefore didn’t stick to working all day Saturday and Sunday as planned, and the hours a bit lacking.
My modified calendar after the first 12 week year" class="mt-image-none" height="719
Since I finally separated from the seductively convenient employment I carried on for nearly five years, I now have some time to focus on myself. My back burner has long been stacked high, and some of those pots are surely rotten by now. If I can’t manage to sort through it now that I have the time, then I may truly be hopeless.
Sledding in Truckee, California
Last week I built a hackintosh, and it took a few days of troubleshooting to get the USB ports working properly so I could access all my data, which is stored on a Drobo 5D. I had to wait several days before I could fully access my data, and now it seems I have to wait yet again.
I am not sure what event I have to thank for the current edition of 'data protection', but I am hoping it finishes faster than the 290 hours it initially reported!" class="mt-image-none" height="736
More and more I’ve been thinking about life on this planet. In a strange way, it started with reading “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A. Singer. The book has done wonders to catalyze improving my outlook and thinking, which is a story for another time, but it also made me think about thinking and about what makes us us. In the deepest sense, we are not our bodies, nor are we our thoughts or emotions. Those things all somehow exist in front of us, and we can get involved with them or modulate them or ignore them as we please.
Domingo took this photo one time we went to explore Golden Gate Park. Seeing him up close made me miss my degus!
As explained in my journal, I built my first hackintosh this week. While it’s functional enough, I hope, I still have some potentially major problems with the USB ports, lowering my confidence about using an external drive to store all my data.
About This Mac
Since I bought my first (Micron) computer when I was 10, I’ve had a thing for desktops and customizability. I did buy a giant Dell laptop in around 2003, but after that, I always built my own desktops.
Moving across the country in 2012, though, started convincing me to try to make a laptop work as a primary computer. I had to fit everything I owned in a small SUV, and desktops take up a lot of space! MacBook Pros around that time were starting to get sufficiently powerful to use with external monitors and play movies and everything else, so it seemed it was time to chuck the desktop. Also, all the travel I’ve done in the last two years was infinitely more feasible while using a laptop as a primary.
The 2015 MacBook has only one port for USB and power, so you need a special adapter. This one didn't work, though, even to connect to my SSD. The 36 inch cable caused too much power loss to keep the drive connected, and it didn't work at all with the power plugged in. I was only able to access data while using a six inch USB2.0 cable and no power. USB3.0 caused intermittent disconnects.
A month ago I started reading the book “Biocode: the new age of genomics” Yizhen left with me after heading back to Chicago. I posted some comments about the personal genomics section, but then I got super busy with work. (That will not be happening again with that particular job; more on that in a future post.)
Last week I made time to finish the book. First I had to settle on a note taking system, since I knew I would want to remember to some of the people and places and projects mentioned. Lately I’ve been taking notes on paper, especially when listening to audiobooks on planes and places I don’t want to deal with my computer. But clearly I need a digital solution.
I am me! I’m also a scientist minded software engineer who loves reading, running, listening to music, and recording photos and videos and data of all sorts. After earning a biochemistry degree, I lived in San Francisco and Tokyo, and now I find it difficult to stay put. Read more about me and my online life.
SF: 87% complete; Oakland: 27%
San Francisco Bay Area running progress
Charlie says: “What a wonderful region!”
30 November 2022
In-N-Out Burger (Fast Food Restaurant)
333 Jefferson St , San Francisco , CA
Charlie says: “It was super hot and we got a taste for salty fries, but by the time we walked there it dropped 35° and was cold. Still tasted good!”
28 September 2020 at 20:32
Taqueria Zorro (Mexican Restaurant)
308 Columbus Ave , San Francisco , CA
Charlie says: “Restaurants are hoppin’ around here, feels weird.”
26 September 2020 at 19:42
碼頭老火鍋 (Hotpot Restaurant)
仁愛路四段409-1號 , Da’an District , T’ai-pei Shih
Charlie says: “Delicious spicy hot pot with Harry. I am so full!!”
25 March 2020 at 08:40
桶好呷滷味 (Asian Restaurant)
, Taipei
Charlie says: “We pick a representative set of ingredients and they build out the rest into a braised soup like thing over noodles.”
23 March 2020 at 06:46
Addiction Aquatic Development (上引水產) (Fish Market)
民族東路410巷2弄18號 , Taipei
Charlie says: “Standing sushi bar at a fish market.”
21 March 2020 at 07:03
ACME Breakfast CLUB (Breakfast Spot)
3F., No. 10, Ln. 27, Chengdu Rd., , Taipei
Charlie says: “Brunch w/ Shawn! Was tempted to get the avocado toast kind of as a joke since I never get it in SF, but resisted, sourdough was good. :-)”
20 March 2020 at 22:27
三甲和風創意料理 (Japanese Restaurant)
Charlie says: “Late dinner with Shawn, at a lovely place!”
20 March 2020 at 09:28
中央藝文公園 Central Culture Park (Park)
北平東路與紹興北街口 , Taipei
Charlie says: “Social distance.”
20 March 2020 at 03:42
虎頭山環保公園 (Scenic Lookout)
Charlie says: “Exploring the hillside in Taoyuan City.”
14 March 2020 at 23:49
Abura-Ya (Japanese Restaurant)
362 17th St , Oakland , CA
Charlie says: “Dinner with Beam before Sarah McLachlan!”
24 February 2020 at 18:55
