Check out the panorama I made using my cell phone camera. I would have though the distortion would have been just awful, due to the pinhole lens, but it's not too bad. You'll notice that there are some strange pinkish hues in the sky. Is MCAS Miramar releasing pink dye into the sky for this weekend's air show? My more logical guesses are: A.) dirt on the lens; II.) something funky with the CCD; or 3.)something funky with the JPEG compression algorithm of the cell phone. A.) is likely always the case, but I suspect that II.) and 3.) are also quite likely.

Three months ago I wrote that Yahoo! Mail Beta still stinks. I said that Yahoo! had fixed two of my five main quibbles with their newest email interface. Sure, they fixed two, but they were the ones I cared least about.

Lo and behold, Yahoo! came out with an updated version of Mail Beta a month ago, and more recently my server farm received the update. Let's see how Yahoo! fares this round!

1. Fixed-width fonts. Huzzah! Numbah one gets addressed. This is big. Fixing this almost is enough for me to start using Beta every day. But only almost. Yahoo!, you get a nice green check:

   

2. Message replying format. Nope. Nothing new here. Same, lame behavior as before. Give us some freedom, Yahoo!. Stop putting the minority with good etiquette down! This earns you a Big Red X, and red is never a good color for anything.

   

3. Message quoting. Nope, again. There is still no way to differentiate the message I'm replying to and what I've written. Another BRX.

   

Yahoo!, you're getting beat up, down, left and right by Google. They just took YouTube out from under you this week! Shape up!

I came across this transcript of the Chancellor (link broken) of UC San Diego, Marye Anne Fox, answering students questions during an online chat. The questions were not very interesting. Missing is a question about the vowel shortages in Bosnia, and why she's not helping them out, because she's got some extra "e"s to lend.

I guess in the chatroom format, complete answers aren't really called for. Sometimes I think she hits it just right:

beebop> Hey, Marye quick question: I was just wondering, what is your favorite sandwich?
MA_Fox> that's easy. a cheeseburger

On the other hand, sometimes she doesn't answer at all, in full politician mode:

fitfreak> I'd like to know more about the upcoming vote to raise fees to help pay for Division 2 scholarships. Why is this necessary?
MA_Fox> I encourage you to get involved with student govt so that you may weigh the pluses and minuses of expanding athletic scholarships.

And there's the people with their little problems:

maricket> I'm a cheerleader on campus, I am wondering why we do not receive priority registration. We are now considered "athletes" and I think we do more than our part to contribute to UCSD's spirit and athletic program. Having practice at least 12 hours a week plus games, rallies, and fundraisers, I believe that we deserve a chance to plan around those events with that priority registration. What do you think?
MA_Fox> I was not aware of this issue and will discuss it with the VC for Student Affairs.

I wonder how MA_Fox would have answered if maricket was a cheerleader off campus?

Overall, I get the distinct feeling that she's not really earning the $408,510 she's being paid as the Chancellor. Honestly, do her answers strike you as concise and to the point? She really doesn't know what students care about. If she was being verbally grilled by a thesis comittee, she'd be flunked. And since this is a university, I think that's a fair measure of her performance.

I went over to a nearby bike shop to get a quote for my damaged bike (ask if you're interested), and I had some time to kill while I was waiting for the manager, so I wandered over to a nearby dead-end street. Parked there was this very odd machine (which I took photos of, now that my cell phone has been fixed):

The only hints I can provide is that this machine is parked next to a marshy area, and a 40 food deep hole in the pavement with a pump pumping water out of the hole. Perhaps the machine is a mud processor/filterer/cleaner of some sort?

Can you guess what this machine does? I can't.

I've had my Motorola E815 phone for about a year. It has bluetooth, a camera, and other cool features, like many modern phones. Bluetooth enables you to transfer photos, movies and ringtones on and off a phone. All these things seem like a useful feature set for a phone. However, Verizon, the carrier for my current phone, disabled a number of bluetooth features, such as file transfer.

Why would Verizon intentionally cripple a phone? Money, of course. Turning off the file transfer abilities of a phone means that if I want to get the photos I take using my phone onto my personal computer, I need to use their not free services. Also, if I want to get a new ringtone, I need to pay for them (often over a buck for 30 seconds of music!), instead of uploading a simple, free, MIDI I found on the internet.

Ever since I got my phone, I've been aware that it is easily hacked to allow all bluetooth function, but it required a special USB cable. I never got around to buying the $10 cable, and hacking the phone, until now.

The camera actually takes farily decent photos in a wide range of light conditions considering it's just a pinhole lens. It also takes short movies, with sound. I can also upload MIDI sound files, or even MP3s, and make them my ringtone. I've always wanted to pull out my camera phone whenever I saw something cool, but never bothered because I couldn't get them off the camera for free. Now that I can, I'll be more willing to snap a pic of whatever.

I got this in my "Spam" mail folder today:

UCSD
CAMPUS NOTICE
University of California, San Diego

OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR

September 28, 2006

ALL ACADEMICS AND STAFF AT UCSD (including UCSD Medical Center)

SUBJECT: UCSD Celebration of Abilities Month

I am pleased to announce and encourage faculty, staff and students to participate in the Celebration of Abilities Month events during the month of October 2006. Featured events will be held at the Price Center Plaza on October 4 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and consecutively on October 5 at the grassy area between Torrey Pines Center North and Torrey Pines Center South.

The purpose of these activities is to increase the awareness of and sensitivity to the abilities and needs of people with disabilities at UCSD. Details and a complete schedule of events can be viewed at: http://blink.ucsd.edu/go/disabilityawarenessmonth

In recognition of this annual event, I am approving one hour of administrative leave with pay that employees may apply to their
attendance at a Celebration of Abilities activity. Supervisors are encouraged to allow employees one hour of administrative leave with pay to attend a Celebration of Abilities event when the absence does not infringe upon the performance of required job duties.

Inquiries regarding the events may be directed to the Human Resources Department, Employee Rehabilitation Program at (858)534-6744.
Marye Anne Fox
Chancellor

Now read this excellent article from the Onion: Congress Passes Americans With No Abilities Act. Now go back and re-read the above email. If you've ever dealt with Academic Computing Services here at UCSD, you'll know who will be getting the biggest cheers at this celebration.

Five years ago, I was not yet a college graduate. Now I'm beginning my fourth year of graduate school. I have a masters degree in physics, I'm on my way to a PhD, I'm more or less self sufficient and I am in a stable relationship. I can safely say that I've learned much in the last five years.

This cannot be said for the DHS. It is run by a bunch of morons. Take this news peice from today: "Cell phone makers fight resales." People are buying cheap handsets meant for by-the-minute cell plans and shipping them to foreign countries for resale at higher prices. The US is one of the few places in the world where cell phone companies subsidise the cost of the handset, hoping (rightly) to recoup the cost in the monthly service charges. However, because these phones are sold without a contract, and are not yet activated, there's no assurance that the person buying the phone will have to make monthly payments. Clearly, and logically, the phone companies are bothered by this.

So why does the DHS care about this? Why, terrorism, of course! 9/11! Terrorism! All these phones could be used for remote detonation devices. Yeah, and so could a Dale Earnhardt Jr. NASCAR Radio Controlled Car for $9.95 at Radioshack. Seriously folks, if a terrorist wanted a cell phone to detonate a bomb, does he need to buy dozens at once from one store? No. Terrorists want to act on the down low, which means buying perhaps one or two at any one time. They don't want to attract attention because they're doing illegal things. The people buying 20 phones at once don't care about seeming out of the ordinary because they are breaking no laws. It seems the en vogue thing to do that if your business model is in jeopardy, cry "terrorism!" and hope the DHS and their bad logic comes to the rescue. In this case, the DHS proves once again, they are unable to recognize legitimate threats.

According to the comment on my last post, my brother is not actually going to teach in Jeongseon. He's in Gohan, a few valleys over from Jeongseon. Interestingly, it's the home to the only casino in South Korea that South Koreans can gamble in. It's also going to open a ski resort in December which has made him happy, no doubt.

Hopefully he'll post something about the hamlet soon.

My brother is in Korea to teach english for a year. A few days ago he was told exactly where he'll be teaching, Jeongseon, Kangwon-do province, South Korea. Sensing a challenge, I went ahead and tracked down this mountain town.

The image on the left is a Google Earth image of the area around Jeongseon. It's a mountainous area -- the town appears to be jammed in between 1000 meter peaks at a 180 degree bend in the river (what river?). It also appears to be small -- it's smaller than 2 miles from end to end. If you'd like to find Jeongseon, go to 37° 22'36.52" N, 128° 39'54.46" E.

With all recent news about doping in cycling (and everywhere else), including the whole Floyd Landis debacle, I think that it's high time to institute Top Fuel Cycling. What? Top Fuel?!

Here it is: Throw all doping controls out the window. Anything that doesn't kill you (immediately) is allowed. EPO, testosterone, human growth hormone, amphetamines, and many more. Finally, there will be no question about who's on the stuff and on the clear.

On the flip side, there will be a league for cyclists who aren't on anything. In fact, they'll be forced to live like an average american. They'll need to eat cheetos, or maybe the league will be sponsored by the Lance snack company. It will be in their contract that half their calories have to come from Lance snacks. The other half from soft drinks and beer. To top it all off, this league will be followed by a TV crew filming a reality series. Each week someone will be kicked off by a judging panel, made up of Lance Armstrong, Lance Bass, and David Hasselhoff.

Above is a part of what I've been working on lately. It's a small part of the galaxy family tree that I've derived from a large simulation. In the simulation there are several ingredients that are thrown in the "box." Relevant to this are the dark matter particles, which coalesce into consituents of galaxies. The dark matter particles have unique id numbers. Using a some code I didn't write, I process the simulation data and make a list of galaxies along with the particles in each galaxy. Then, using some code I did write, I track particles and galaxies over a number of time steps, which builds a relational mapping. Then, I use Graphviz to make a nice tree, as you see above.

Inside each box are either three or four data values. The top grid shows what percentage of the particles in that group came from no group, the middle grid shows both the number of dark matter particles that are in the group and the position of the group, while the bottom grid shows the percentage of the particles that go to no group. The simulation takes place inside of a 3D box with length 1 on a side and periodic boundaries (which means the distance between 0.9 and 0.1 is 0.2, not 0.8). The colors of the box correspond to its ranking in size, red is the largest, green the smallest. The numbers next to the arrows are what percentage of the parent group goes to the child group.

The goal of this is to get an idea of how the galaxies form over the course of the simulation. Of course the simulation tries to mirror reality, so this family tree may be worth something.

Today a bunch of "Islamic fascists" were arrested in London for plotting to blow up 10 transatlantic flights using liquid bombs. My parents are currently in Wales, and I think they were planning on returning in a little over a week. Who knows if their flight might have been targeted? It's unlikely, but there was (and still is, I suppose) a non-zero probability of something happening to any flight.

After watching the evening news tonight on several networks, I've come up with some comments on airport security guidelines & related topics:

• On both networks I watched (CBS, NBC) there were dozens of clips of passengers throwing their liquid items into the trash, and then airport workers collecting huge bags full of discarded items & throwing them into dumpsters. If liqud bombs were a real concern, wouldn't the contents of the trash be treated with more respect than that?
• I subscribe to the Crypto-Gram newsletter written by Bruce Schneier. One of the things he's written about over the last few years is airport security. Specifically, how they (being the "experts" at DHS/TSA) react to security threats. Usually, they act after the threat has been identified, or sometimes, after the second time. Responding after the threat is identified is like taking a final exam a second time, except people die. What's needed is more comprehensive security that responds to a broad range of threats, not silly movie plot scenarios.
• I can't resist. Here's my movie plot scenario: If a terrorist is willing to die, surely they're willing to undergo some elective surgery. I don't think it would be impossible to implant some explosive device inside a human body. It would not be very comfortable, and would probably lead to infections after a while, but the bomber needs only to be able to tolerate it long enough to get on the airplane. Right now (and until someone attempts this) people are only put through the metal detector. Careful engineering could certainly prevent any kind of detection by that crude device.
• Airline perks are going to make a comeback. Now that you can't take anything onto the airplane, the airline will have to supply diversions and food, or else they face very bored & unhappy passengers. The alternative is to start filling the cabin with N₂O.
• A coworker today theorized that the endgame in all of this is a plane full of passengers in hospital-like paper gowns handcuffed to the seats. Passengers will be supplied with absorbent underwear for the longer flights. Children will be put in cages. Do you think this can't happen?

Every year in May UCSD hosts the Sun God Festival, which for most students is an excuse to get drunk and skip class. It is held on the lawn surrounding the Sun God, a large bird-like statue in the middle of campus. There are many student organizations that set up tables & other activities, such as inflatable sumo wrestling or pixie bike jumping. Usually, the controversial student publication, The Koala, has some kind of water-based activity. One year ago it was a slip-n-slide, and this year it was a slip-n-side too, but this time with a chute off a small embankment.

All of this, I suppose, is in tribute to, or because of the statue for which the festival is named. After all, the artist who made it was French, until 2002, when she died.

What's not to like about this entry in the Stuart Collection? It was the first item in the collection. It's colorful, simple, vibrant, and not hard to interpret. Perhaps out of all the items in the collection, this is the one UCSD students actually pay attention to most. And that's saying something, if you've ever met an UCSD undergraduate.

I've been riding bikes for so long that it's unusual that I learn something new. The last couple weeks I've started learning how to do the madison, easily the most insane event on the track. The madison, named after the arena in New York City, is a team event with two riders per team. One rider is racing, while one rests. In the multi-day race events, often one rider will ride for hours, and then switch off to the other teammate.

In shorter events, both riders are on the velodrome at once. The one who is resting either rides very slowly or holds onto the railing. When the racing team member wishes to be relieved, usually after a lap or two, the resting rider meets the racer, and they exchange momentum via a hand-sling.

The thing that makes this event so darned exciting is the sheer number of things going on at once. Firstly, of course, there's a race going on. Then, you've got riders coming in & out of the event. Sometimes multiple riders are coming into the race at the same time, so positioning and timing is very important. Since it is a race where you're only going one or two laps, essentially a racer goes nearly all out, followed by a short rest.

Do you want to help me get my PhD faster? If so, go on over to this website and buy me one Zenview six screen multidisplay. I'd also like you to buy me a computer capable of running all the monitors.

It's only your money. We're talking about my education here!