tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-109360612012-02-13T18:44:35.457-05:00My adventures in nuclear engineering graduate school and elsewhere.Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.comBlogger7241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-49559785384300715752012-02-09T20:18:00.000-05:002012-02-09T20:18:10.429-05:00

For a good time, add this to someone else's Python class: def __nonzero__(self): try: result = self.__nonzerostate except AttributeError: result = True self.__nonzerostate = not result return result <!-- MARKDOWN INPUT: For a good time, add this to someone else's Python class: def __nonzero__(self): try: result = self.__nonzerostate

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-23026504120712513232012-01-10T20:42:00.003-05:002012-01-10T20:42:44.538-05:00

Responsibility is a strange beast. I don't mean the responsibility of getting to work on time and working a distraction-free eight hour day---that's an isolated, self-focused sort of responsibility. The kind I was thinking about today is in relationships where I am an "authority" in some sense. As a full-blown Ph.D. scientist, I was asked by one of the students here to review a paper he wrote.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-90249036141626265642011-12-08T23:26:00.001-05:002011-12-08T23:32:26.862-05:00

Well, all the hard work and perseverance has finally paid off. I have passed my thesis defense, and I don't have any revisions to my thesis! Those so inclined may download my dissertation for fun and enrichment. Next stop, adulthood!<!-- MARKDOWN INPUT: Well, all the hard work and perseverance has finally paid off. I have passed my thesis defense, and I don't have any revisions to my thesis!

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-10383368991803308442011-11-20T20:55:00.001-05:002011-11-20T21:06:26.952-05:00

Today I dreamt of paired, hyphenated words. hoity-toity arsy-versy topsy-turvy And the bonus word: hubble-bubble I will never utter the mundane word 'hookah' again. Why prefer a common, understandable word when a ludicrous, fanciful one is available?<!-- MARKDOWN INPUT: Today I dreamed of paired, hyphenated words. - hoity-toity - arsy-versy - topsy-turvy And the bonus word: -

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-66986863121283452642011-11-19T18:19:00.001-05:002011-11-19T18:25:54.928-05:00

On certain pages---and only certain pages---of my LaTeX-written dissertation, sub-pixel anti-aliasing was strangely unavailable. On these pages, where I'd embedded PDFs created in Illustrator, the print quality would also suffer. And this behavior only appeared in documents generated on one computer, which has pdftex-1.40.12; not my other, which has pdftex-1.40.11. Moving the PDF file from one

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-12765492255050623712011-11-14T00:22:00.001-05:002011-11-14T00:26:01.071-05:00

As a fifth-year grad student, I want to respond to mass emails sent to my department, e.g.: Hey: Is anyone willing to sell me their Michigan vs. Nebraska Tickets? [NAME REDACTED (SOPHOMORE)] with Get off my lawn! I feel like a cranky old man.<!-- MARKDOWN INPUT: As a fifth-year grad student, I want to respond to mass emails sent to my department such as: > Hey: > > Is anyone willing to sell

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-50835283826005771472011-10-19T10:25:00.000-04:002011-10-19T10:25:07.420-04:00

Google voice transcription of background noise when someone accidentally pocket dialed me: Hey hey, how sorry bye. Hey, Just okay bye bye bye. Ciao. Thank you. Hello How, yeah Okay bye. Ohh okay, bye. But quo, okay bye bye, okay bye okay Kirk, bye. Cook please bye hey. Hello Hello. Hello. I think. Bye still talk, cost the commercial. Okay bye. Dick, call and Mark, dot, com hey, book. Hey check

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-38580102509014699052011-10-15T21:41:00.000-04:002011-10-15T21:41:14.040-04:00

Having become increasingly picky about which of my photographs I share, I'm beginning to understand why artists sometimes destroy their own "unsatisfactory" work while the public decries the destruction. Is it pride to set an exceedingly high standard for oneself when others might enjoy works below that standard? How does one balance others' enjoyment against one's own sense of adequacy?

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-2950187231433298182011-10-12T10:25:00.001-04:002011-10-12T13:01:36.902-04:00

The Rackham dissertation requirements state that "at least" the first sentence of all figure captions must appear in the "List of figures" at the beginning of the thesis. I follow the stylistic convention of having a brief description of the figure as the first sentence, and a sometimes lengthy elaboration afterward. It is unwieldy to have a paragraph of explanatory text appear in the index at

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-91447624242857235742011-10-05T07:25:00.001-04:002011-10-12T10:25:49.041-04:00

Life floored the accelerator this week, leaving me on a crash course with destiny. In less melodramatic phrasing, I have a thesis defense date scheduled for December 8. I am moving out of my apartment on November 30. My dissertation is due to Rackham and my committee the day before Thanksgiving, November 23rd. I'm flying to DC for a conference at the end of the month, so I need to prepare two

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-90777203366640348562011-09-27T15:01:00.002-04:002011-09-27T15:01:17.094-04:00

If anyone else is as tired as I am of spurious warnings when compiling Epetra, Teuchos, and Belos modules in Trilinos with -Wall -Wextra, I have created a patchfile that corrects the deficient code.<!-- MARKDOWN INPUT: If anyone else is as tired as I am of spurious warnings when compiling Epetra, Teuchos, and Belos modules in [Trilinos](http://trilinos.sandia.gov/) with `-Wall -Wextra`, I have

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-89497752137664771902011-09-21T09:28:00.001-04:002011-09-27T11:46:12.570-04:00

I've been less than pleased with TeXShop on Lion. I do most of my editing in Vim using Vim-LaTeX, but I compile with TeXShop. Most importantly, I sometimes use SyncTeX to jump between my compiled document and source. To switch away from TeXShop, I want both an integrated compiler and an external editor with SyncTeX. Skim with this configuration fit the bill. Yet Vim-LaTeX won't play nicely with

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-48964176871834467822011-09-15T00:14:00.000-04:002011-09-15T09:07:25.002-04:00

I've had my research in a git repository for more than a year and a half. Because most of my computational experiments are small (i.e., single processor rather than supercluster), I've stored a number of results in the repository rather than in a separate directory. Well, 18 months and many obsolete and regenerated results later, my repository is rather bloated. Preferring to only modify my

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-32318555714503328452011-09-14T15:05:00.000-04:002011-09-15T09:07:33.783-04:00

After updating my vim installation, my command set iskeyword+=: in ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/tex.vim stopped functioning. (This was recommended by the Vim-LaTeX project.) My auto-completion for chapter references chap:intro and equations eq:blahBlah was broken because the colon was no longer interpreted as a command character. To make a long story short, I found the :verbose set isk command which

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-33718261402805125012011-08-20T21:01:00.000-04:002011-08-20T21:01:58.774-04:00

This evening I disassembled a broken, discarded electronic typewriter. Interestingly, the "ink" tape incremented one letter width per press, so by exposing the used tape, it was possible to read what was previously typed on it. The letters were in reverse order, and there were no spaces, daerottluciffidrehtarsawtios.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-42946450761034380992011-07-11T22:03:00.002-04:002011-07-11T22:15:39.479-04:00

Follow me on the Google. I have a feeling Google will be pushing Plus by integrating their many overlapping services: particularly, sharing internet stories (and comments on them) via Google Reader, Buzz, and Google+; and "Like"-ing and item in Buzz/Reader, "+1"-ing it in Google+. I suspect the main barrier to this is that Google+ and the +1 system are a new internal design, not closely coupled

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-16287715764121382382011-06-25T21:51:00.000-04:002011-06-25T21:51:39.415-04:00

It is interesting to note that our grocery stores have changed the nomenclature of the fruit they sell. In addition to seedless watermelons, there are "seeded watermelons," once known as "watermelons." (It gives the impression that seeds have been added to them for some ineffable reason.) Exceptions and norms seem to trade places all the time in language. One example that comes to mind is what

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-87526074452099488272011-06-18T22:01:00.003-04:002011-06-18T22:05:58.260-04:00

This Saturday's sailing took place on a bigger lake than usual. I skipped sailing club to join my friend on a large sailboat out on Lake Erie. I had almost as much fun with my new camera and equipment (especially my new Nikkor 50mm, but also the 55-200 VR) as I did with the sailing aspect. :)

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-90080380482150702272011-06-07T10:56:00.000-04:002011-06-07T10:56:16.863-04:00

Those who are in the nuclear engineering business might be interested to know that I've updated the LaTeX class for ANS transaction summaries. It is now more compliant with the ANS-specified guidelines, and it uses a much better version of the Times math font.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-30726267721414223292011-06-05T13:52:00.001-04:002011-06-05T13:54:09.624-04:00

Another reason to write regression tests for C++ code in Python: integration with matplotlib. Here, I test my sampling algorithms with a Q-Q plot:Yes, this at one point saved me from an implementation snafu.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-33295498853468942222011-05-31T17:03:00.000-04:002011-05-31T17:03:30.488-04:00

This month has been busy. I interviewed with the radiation transport group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in in early May, and with the nuclear data and methods group at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory a week ago. Both interviews went excellently, and both groups offered me a job. (What a blessed position to be in, especially considering the economy!) I truly think that working at either would

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-90304120546893564322011-05-03T00:14:00.000-04:002011-05-03T00:14:29.338-04:00

A hidden timing method (which I don't even use) in one of Trilinos' solvers ends up incurring an O(n) performance penalty, where n is the number of instantiations of the solver. By the end of my simulations this actually dominates my wall time.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-29990948166327530112011-04-30T17:00:00.001-04:002011-04-30T20:16:35.484-04:00

Scientific computing developers rejoice. If you want your code to output files readable by LLNL's VisIT, there's a good chance you use the Silo library to do it. Well, if you use MacPorts, you can now download and compile silo without hassle on a Mac. I submitted a port file for Silo this morning, and the great volunteers at MacPorts had it cleaned up and in their repository by the end of the day

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-10252343812733821902011-04-23T20:38:00.000-04:002011-04-23T20:38:22.181-04:00

Well, after talking with a group of nuclear engineers who are interested in open sourcing their codes, and after being persuaded by my friend Mike that it was justifiable to return some of my tools to the taxpayers who've sponsored my education, I have decided to open up my research code. The project is called PyTRT, and it's available at GitHub under a Simplified BSD license. Documentation for

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-82346797559811285312011-04-18T22:45:00.000-04:002011-04-18T22:45:45.907-04:00

Apple Magic Trackpad: Run It For "Free" and Do the Environment, and Your Wallet, a Favor.Most of my AA powered toys and appliances demand a battery change before they are truly depleted. I can measure that there is residual charge and I can't bear to toss them in the trash so they just accumulate in my closet (not a good idea). Behold the Apple Magic Trackpad. It will use the old batteries down

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-43646055079224625742011-04-04T17:54:00.004-04:002011-04-17T17:30:05.293-04:00

Well, I broke down and spent the morning investigating my tax situation, which was rather confused at the end of last year. After some burrowing, I found that TurboTax was surprisingly right after all. Scholarships and fellowships that are reported on Form 1098-T rather than Form W-2 count neither for "earned income credit" (on Schedule M) nor for IRA purposes.As regards Schedule M, which covered

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-17810640985031633782011-03-15T11:01:00.001-04:002011-03-15T11:02:36.081-04:00

When the App Store for Mac came out, I was excited at the chance to buy iPhoto without paying for the other apps that I didn't need. My excitement quickly turned to remorse as I encountered bug after bug after bug. Additionally, iPhoto removed useful functionality like the ability to use command shortcuts to switch between photos in "View" mode: in iPhoto it is now impossible to add comments to a

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-37321638221258128602011-03-02T13:32:00.001-05:002011-03-02T13:32:57.533-05:00

The more I work on my research code, PyTRT (a research code with several dozen transport methods—diffusion, Monte Carlo, P1, SN, IMC, etc.—implemented in 1D and 2D), the more I'm convinced this could be a useful tool to many people in methods development. I'm forced to ask myself what I should do with it after I graduate. It's entirely likely that I will continue to use it in my next career, but

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-18688988059437477302011-02-23T12:42:00.000-05:002011-02-23T12:42:55.629-05:00

Tracking Monte Carlo particles (or in this case, ray traces) through a geometry can be tricky because of the subtlety of edge cases. Today I discovered that my tracking routine failed when given a direction of −0.0 . I never imagined that the existence of signed zeroes in IEEE floating point arithmetic could ever bite me.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-54859565268505552032011-02-21T19:05:00.000-05:002011-02-21T19:05:10.737-05:00

Almost every time I open up Terminal, I've wanted three tabs open with three particular directories. That means using Cmd-Tab a lot and tab completion to change the directory. I finally got fed up with that and invented a solution to take care of that automatically.The first step is creating a "Window group" in the terminal. Go to the menu item "Windows < Save Windows as Group…", make up a name,

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-19389054926071066752011-02-12T11:39:00.001-05:002011-03-02T13:28:25.523-05:00

I am still proud of my code to get the angle in a quadrature set reflected across an axis. It's a little crazy. const AngleT& getReflectedAngle(const AngleT& a, unsigned int axis ) const { return angles_[ (a.getOctantIndex() ^ (1 + ( axis << 1)) + 1) * numAnglesPerOctant_ - 1 - a.getSubIndex() ]; } This section of code is copyright © 2011 Seth R Johnson, All rights reserved.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-70880352011526583572010-12-09T19:43:00.001-05:002011-01-04T16:18:33.847-05:00

Among the benefits of being a grad student is the ability to do literature review in one's hot tub.Among the drawbacks of being in Ann Arbor is waking up to find the ambient temperature outside to be 5 °F.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-50051940538351374492010-12-02T12:52:00.000-05:002010-12-02T12:52:08.759-05:00

In case anyone out there hasn't yet submitted their paper for the upcoming M&C conference, I have cooked up a BibTeX bibliography style file for the International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods that accurately reproduces their example references in the provided LaTeX template. Download it to save yourself the trouble of manually formatting your citations.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-64779314403425985192010-11-01T20:10:00.000-04:002010-11-01T20:10:28.068-04:00

Who could have foreseen that a diæresis could engender such mirth? I am infinitely obliged to the footnotes of Dr. Ryan McClarren's dissertation as a continually renewed source of amusement over the last two years. I dedicate the “technically correct” accentuation of the word reëmission in my thesis prospectus to him. Cheers.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-16394660066312827622010-10-01T10:59:00.000-04:002010-10-01T10:59:00.014-04:00

Combining my love of sailing and English by chuckling delightedly whenever I hear people use nautically originated phrases in everyday speech: take aback square away give leeway jump ship stem to stern etc.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-39214729300466868492010-09-29T18:24:00.000-04:002010-09-29T18:24:45.675-04:00

My body seems to be reacting very negatively to the precipitous decrease in sunlight and exercise. Waking up to the sun today (made possible only by sleeping in, in these post-equinox times) made me feel like a new man.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-83279763219805499522010-09-27T10:32:00.000-04:002010-09-27T10:32:45.845-04:00

I woke up Saturday night to a car alarming. My keys were in my hand; I must have pushed the panic button in my sleep. I pressed the unlock button a couple of times until the car alarm turned off. As I drifted away from consciousness, I realized that it was kind of odd for me to fall asleep with my keys, and in fact I didn't have my keys at all. I had imagined the whole sequence of events in an

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-74673607149328320622010-08-24T12:39:00.001-04:002010-08-26T11:18:31.030-04:00

I recently found myself in the unpleasant situation of having to fly Delta on my birthday. Air travel, even without the TSA's restrictions, has become progressively worse. More than ever, they are following the trans-industry trend of trying to cram additional solicitations and advertisements any way they can. On my flight to Berkeley, the overhead televisions displayed video advertisements for

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-81594784700524980972010-08-06T10:56:00.000-04:002010-08-06T10:56:41.652-04:00

As a logophile, I occasionally browse both my copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and the OED Online. For one reason or another, I was reading the updated draft entry of remember, v.1 sense 5a, and I found the most startlingly nerdy quotation displayed:G. LUCAS Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace 91, I made this for you. So you'd remember me. I carved it out of a japor snippet... It

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-80052954142214686202010-07-26T16:06:00.002-04:002010-07-26T16:09:00.402-04:00

There are very few people who, upon glancing at the section titles in their neutron transport theory books, would chuckle because "The Case of Anisotropic Scattering," "The Albedo Problem," and "The X-Function Identities" all read like titles from a collection of mysteries.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-797038342323553822010-07-24T13:36:00.001-04:002010-07-24T13:37:36.251-04:00

Nothing calls to mind the human need for shelter more than does being drenched to the skin by a tremendous thunderstorm that interrupted the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Beer Festival 2010. I'm not sure which was worse: being teeth-rattlingly cold at the zenith of summer, or having my beer diluted by the deluge. The event was still fun, of course, and one upside of the storm was watching

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-91030678897926111582010-07-21T23:26:00.003-04:002010-07-21T23:35:15.830-04:00

Part of my wild Michigan vacation tour last week was a brief stop at Mackinaw City. In addition to being the home to touristy fudge, it includes the site of a 300-year-old fort upon which a replica has been constructed from the archeological evidence. It was an impressive reproduction in most respects, but I was struck by one embarrassing anachronism in a reproduction of a small printed pamphlet.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-46350767238551118862010-07-11T16:09:00.001-04:002010-07-11T19:20:14.308-04:00

I have been selected to travel to Berkeley for a scientific computer code workshop. It should be both an informative event (useful for dissertation and career) and a fun trip to somewhere completely new for me!I hope I don't have to travel back the day after it ends, for the three-hour time zone change will make my birthday the shortest I've ever had.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-39426060383795366612010-07-08T17:04:00.000-04:002010-07-08T17:04:28.620-04:00

Research this week is going well—I've (mostly) invented a new time-dependent transport method—and I also just found out I won a fellowship that will keep me funded (and more) until I graduate. Hooray!

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-23964529548705719862010-06-30T15:08:00.002-04:002010-07-01T11:42:24.986-04:00

I've noticed this particularly frustrating psychological phenomenon before, yet only recently have I found that it's a studied and named effect. I can count three separate instances this has come up with respect to the ability to skillfully operate a motor vehicle, and each time has particularly disheartened me.Yesterday, I quite legally passed a driver on a two-lane road. He had been talking on

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-89873933194412471442010-06-22T13:17:00.000-04:002010-06-22T13:17:45.572-04:00

I might suggest a slogan for "designated sailor" awareness out on the lake: don't imbibe and jibe?

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-10247196741424803452010-06-18T16:39:00.001-04:002010-06-18T16:39:17.530-04:00

Curse you, the internet, for your abhorrent mangling of the words "epic" and "fail." The Iliad is epic. Typical residents of the internet fail to appreciate the beauty of literate conversation.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-32083417892413510102010-06-11T12:16:00.001-04:002010-06-11T12:17:26.800-04:00

The discrete ordinates approximation for transport lumps "particles" into certain directions. In a 1-D time-dependent transport problem, the effect is the same as having several waves propagating at different speeds from the source region.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-42933236378429336772010-06-08T15:03:00.002-04:002010-06-08T15:05:00.810-04:00

Rather than spending time posting on this Blog, I have been taking advantage of all that the summers here have to offer. My new hobby is sailing at the excellent Michigan sailing club. After only a month, I can handle light wind well enough to go out on my own in a JY-15. My grasp of the nautical nomenclature is also vastly improved: now I can understand what the characters in the Hornblower

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-1461931197060997502010-05-17T12:33:00.001-04:002010-05-17T12:35:28.017-04:00

To illustrate my feelings about Pi, let me compare it with two other movies I've watched in the last couple of weeks in this highly quantitative figure:

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-40485034913431380952010-05-15T17:43:00.001-04:002010-05-15T17:45:06.403-04:00

Led to believe that the movie Pi was an interesting and mathy psychological thriller, I found instead that it resembled an episode of Square One written by an Kabbalistic liberal arts student, stoned out of his gourd, with a fetish for minimalism.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-49162538893416944062010-05-04T10:07:00.004-04:002010-05-04T12:31:37.478-04:00

A study titled The largest Last Supper: depictions of food portions and plate size increased over the millennium has attempted to extrapolate nominal meal portion sizes from paintings of The Last Supper created over an 800-year span. Now, tell me if this is not the worst regression analysis you've ever seen: Really, a parabolic fit? One that extends 300 years beyond the range of the data? I'm no

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-47233023163294908912010-04-27T11:36:00.000-04:002010-04-27T11:36:47.347-04:00

For some reason, in the last couple of weeks, I've found myself using the "just because X doesn't mean Y" construction, and immediately being unable to understand what I've just written, especially when X or Y is negative. For example:Just because I'm not hungry doesn't mean I can't eat.Just because I'm full doesn't mean I can't eat.Just because I'm full doesn't mean I have to stop eating.Merely

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-62540416382631786262010-04-21T08:57:00.003-04:002010-04-21T10:59:53.118-04:00

Zounds, Becky, look at her sackbut. It's so... melodic! She looks like one of those knight's betrotheds... Thanks, Mike.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-84525154190818040582010-04-12T16:43:00.000-04:002011-09-23T10:19:14.088-04:00

Saturday evening marked the end of the ANS Student conference. I was the workshop coordinator, one of the most manageable roles in the committee. Even so, we spent an incredible amount of work preparing and keeping the conference running smoothly. I'm proud to say that the conference went off almost without a hitch, and is regarded by many as being the best yet.Unfortunately, I was too busy

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-32389640767227447222010-04-05T21:10:00.000-04:002010-04-05T21:10:11.137-04:00

According to the IRS, fellowship income is not "earned income" and therefore ineligible to purchase IRAs (Roth or traditional). So if you're a student on fellowship with frugal habits and a forward-looking investment plan, make sure not to choose this investment strategy, so that you can avoid the bureaucratic rigamarole of transferring funds after the account was set up in order to avoid

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-38745625546736117062010-03-23T16:56:00.001-04:002010-03-24T12:43:44.407-04:00

Even the very names of the student assembly political parties at the University of Michigan are enough to make any conservative shake his head and turn away:MForward Michigan Vision PartyDefend Affirmative Action PartyUpdate: Vote Bender Bending Rodriguez for MSA representative!

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-3252317605408921792010-03-18T15:55:00.007-04:002010-06-14T16:29:34.982-04:00

Update 6/14: Three months later and I find out those EXPLETIVE DELETED lied to me. It wasn't disconnected, just rerouted to someone else's account—the apartment complex, who are now charging me.Update 3/24: The following letter was based on incorrect information given out by one of DTE's phone representatives. There is no new policy that eliminates seasonal disconnects, so it is possible (for a

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-20559165608091975662010-03-12T17:33:00.003-05:002010-03-13T12:24:19.644-05:00

Today I had a little fun with my code. As I've mentioned too often, it's written with a Python front end. That means I can very easily interact with the hundreds of Python modules out there. Well, this being a Friday afternoon, I decided to tie it into an image processing library, which will let me turn an image into a series of values, which I can then define as a field on my mesh (e.g., the

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-60868739598410629692010-03-11T11:18:00.001-05:002010-03-11T11:19:34.939-05:00

In less than two months, I have: Built a 2D mesh code, with capabilities including particle tracking (distance from point to edges, which cell to go to next) and fields for efficient, type-safe data storage and retrieval. Written an exception-safe C++/Python interface to write the mesh and scalar/vector/tensor data (on cells, faces, or edges) to Visit for easy 2D plotting. Created a 2D

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-45744431395565913552010-03-08T13:51:00.001-05:002010-03-08T13:51:59.197-05:00

Skies sunny,Surroundings serene;Seth smiles.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-68323347149468895512010-03-05T11:52:00.004-05:002010-03-05T11:55:32.458-05:00

Without Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter, and the million other distractions of the internet at home, I've had a lot more time to enjoy the fine arts. Here are a few of things I've listened to and read. Music I've bought/checked out at the libraryThe Decemberists: The Crane Wife. Beautiful ballads, cleverly composed and with innovative instrumentation. I dig it.Pärt: In Principio. Its minimalist

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-34507801767292315612010-03-02T14:29:00.000-05:002010-03-02T14:29:59.190-05:00

A number of bloggers regularly post snippets from articles they read and find interesting. I'm lazy, so I just click the "share" button in Google Reader. I've now added a widget in this blog's sidebar to display the latest items that I've shared. Alternatively, you can subscribe to my public feed. (Link to add to google reader directly.) The topics are more or less what I post about on

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-75571460165853328602010-02-26T15:46:00.000-05:002010-02-26T15:46:25.584-05:00

Yesterday I beat Metallica's Battery on expert drums. Drums are a lot more fun (and difficult) than I gave them credit for before I started playing this game.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-66507382943352270642010-02-26T11:45:00.002-05:002010-02-26T11:46:28.698-05:00

Git is picky about leave trailing whitespace (spaces at the end of a line) in your code. To keep it from being a problem, I modified some helpful scripts to my exacting specifications: it will notify you if it replaces trailing whitespace, it won't change your cursor position, and it won't affect innocent bystander files. Add it to your $HOME/.vim/ftplugin/cpp.vim ftplugin file. " automatically

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-84056789400677848812010-02-18T15:39:00.002-05:002010-02-18T15:41:36.946-05:00

Well, Honda just called to remind me that the airbag in my ’01 Civic might kill me and that I really should have taken it in to the dealer last fall when they sent me a note in the mail. Perhaps I should.But first, isn't it kind of frightening that Honda has both my local address and my cell phone number, especially since I bought the car directly from an individual person and didn't need to get

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-55807745357128761232010-02-17T16:47:00.001-05:002011-04-25T08:47:12.751-04:00

This is a continuation of my previous post on Python generators with SWIG. I've improved the code, added an iterator class so that the same generator method can be called multiple times concurrently, and added a couple of macros to allow easy instantiation of the SWIG code.A SWIG file (use with the %include directive) is available for download, and further updates will be posted on my projects

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-5855894679232692992010-02-15T16:28:00.002-05:002010-11-28T20:22:52.294-05:00

In my research code, I have a number of classes that act as wrappers for containers, and they provide begin and end functions. I want an easy way to provide a generator for looping over these embedded containers. Because of the way SWIG's STL wrappers work, it's not (easily?) possible to wrap a vector of pointers, and we'd like to avoid all the extra overhead those wrappers have anyway: all we

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-9840728338480034502010-02-12T14:14:00.003-05:002010-02-12T17:11:51.292-05:00

We just found out who will be our commencement speaker this spring. Quoting our University's president:President Obama has captured the imagination and enthusiasm of many students with his inspiring words of hope and change.Let the deification continue unabated. And don't even get me started on honorary degrees.For further explanation of the dangerous environmental threat Smug poses, read this

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-39928843429730243822010-02-04T17:31:00.002-05:002010-02-05T12:49:18.123-05:00

I have tired of credulously linking to pretentious bloggers' own twitter feeds. Today was the last time I clicked on an interestingly titled link only to find 140 or fewer useless characters. My solution: an addition to the user style sheets that turns all links to Twitter a tiny, bilious green. Add the following to your .css file:a[href^="http://twitter.com/"], a[href^="http://www.twitter.com/"]

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-60496935928118047672010-02-01T15:19:00.000-05:002010-02-01T15:19:51.956-05:00

My friend sends a link to the only worthy feed on Twitter: barelyknowher. Whopper with cheese? I barely know 'er!

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-62441677202867994082010-01-27T15:05:00.000-05:002010-01-27T15:05:38.904-05:00

It feels very strange that the iPod I bought nine years ago cost the same price then as Apple's new tablet does now.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-14203276068137184902010-01-25T09:17:00.001-05:002010-01-25T09:21:02.020-05:00

How is it that Golden Crisp, a cereal whose primary constituent is sugar (literally more than 50%, as evidenced by the nutrition facts and ingredients [SUGAR, WHEAT, CORN SYRUP, HONEY]), is labeled on the product packaging as “wholesome”?Also, a relevant link.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-23919510844781311532010-01-21T10:13:00.002-05:002010-01-21T10:15:22.198-05:00

A couple of days ago, a rather malformed email with the subject "Reference man....bad? should it be changed?" arrived in my inbox:Hi,I am and one of the cases is talking about how the nuclear clean-up sites standards should be changed from not only including the Reference Man...but other age groups as well.Do you think this would be an effective policy to put in place? Or do you see places where

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-65261689726137621282010-01-18T16:35:00.003-05:002010-01-18T16:37:59.420-05:00

The Chimera is a mythical creature composed of various parts of different animals. Hence, the biological term "chimera" refers to animals "artificially produced by physically mixing cells from two different organisms." The word also, in a different sense, means "a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve."In light of these two meanings of the same word, I

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-73152968613983905992010-01-15T15:13:00.000-05:002010-01-15T15:13:20.454-05:00

It's "call to papers" time for the ANS transactions, and a number of hits regarding a LaTeX template for it are increasing. (For whatever reason, the ANS only provides an example file in MS Word.)  I've had a request for an example file showing how to use them; for any other interested parties, the example has now been uploaded.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-65070174866982376102010-01-12T18:07:00.002-05:002010-01-12T18:10:53.783-05:00

Five years after this blog's inception, I've updated the appearance. I have too much else going on to make everything pixel-perfect, but its current state is satisfactory compared to the previous stale design.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-46819964248354373662009-12-26T00:01:00.003-05:002009-12-26T00:08:38.678-05:00

Only in my family does Christmas Eve consist of a Handel's Messiah sing-along. I don't just mean the Hallelujah Chorus; I mean the entire first part, sung out of three copies of the musical score, accompanied by The English Concert & Choir.Christmas goodies, besides the fun of being around family, include the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and The Beatles: Rock Band, which is a lot more

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-78642762071771605122009-12-21T21:41:00.004-05:002009-12-22T01:18:20.954-05:00

This afternoon, I played ultimate frisbee outside in seventy-degree weather. I had my windows down on the drive home.If I were in Michigan, seeing how today is Solstice, I would (apparently erroneously) pronounce that "Now is the winter of our discontent."

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-62587395776632682002009-11-25T16:05:00.005-05:002010-01-18T18:03:34.337-05:00

At the ANS Mathematics & Computational topical conference this spring, I heard a rumor (from a very well-placed source) about an ironic error in MCNP. MCNP is considered by many in the labs and industry to be "the" nuclear simulation program of choice. It's a Monte Carlo transport program with continuous energy data and the ability to represent virtually exact geometry (with no truncation error

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-58792163908042973452009-11-20T17:33:00.007-05:002009-11-20T18:06:49.905-05:00

Yes, this is the third post in a day after two weeks of abdication. But in all fairness, I meant to quote the late William Safire two or three weeks ago after I read this excerpt in a collection of On Language articles:But when you play by the rules of grammar -- that is, when you agree to adopt a style that befits a certain level and tone of discourse -- and then stick to the rules you've

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-8086056476206317802009-11-20T17:16:00.002-05:002009-11-20T17:28:02.929-05:00

I am apparently overly prone to hyphenating words. I knew that compound adjectives are supposed to be hyphenated. (Compound adjectives are modifiers composed of two words stuck together.) However, I wasn't sure if predicate adjectives were supposed to be hyphenated. I would certainly have a time-dependent simulation, but could I say that my simulation is time-dependent? As it turns out, I cannot

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-7679928044588610952009-11-20T11:24:00.006-05:002010-01-18T18:04:28.116-05:00

With all the new code I've been writing—namely, a large number of classes and template parameters and typedefs—I've been using a number of traits classes. This unfortunately posed a problem for SWIG (which provides a Python front-end to the C++ code), because it had trouble deducing the true object types through the maze (albeit short) of inheritance, typedefs, and template parameters. It had

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-4647821900347958852009-11-19T09:01:00.003-05:002009-11-19T09:09:37.590-05:00

An important lesson was learned yesterday. After cutting up hot peppers, it is important to be VERY careful to wash one's hands thoroughly before:rubbing one's eyes,wiping one's nose, orgoing to the bathroom.Keeping the readers' delicate sensibilities in mind, I will omit a fuller description.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-15149486026819999152009-11-09T16:25:00.005-05:002010-01-18T18:08:21.524-05:00

Archaic word of the day: "ſenſleſſe" (line 42)(Title is a reference to one of the best SNL skits ever, which is unfortunately no longer available online.)

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-80649424291815256062009-10-28T17:07:00.004-04:002010-01-18T18:01:06.499-05:00

Ten years ago, I would have never imagined English to be as interesting as I find it now. The nuances of usage, the graded palette of vocabulary, the rich history, the wild but legitimate structure its grammar allows——It's a fun challenge both to adhere to the guidelines of modern grammar and to structure the words in ways pleasing to the ear and conducive to the flow of the text. (Yes, I'm

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-67426424475396513192009-10-28T14:49:00.003-04:002009-10-28T14:54:22.049-04:00

I am compelled to link to How To Write Badly Well, whose example texts read like entries to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Coincidentally, they both resemble Dan Brown's writing style.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-14186521019087820662009-10-05T15:49:00.003-04:002010-01-18T18:08:52.753-05:00

The gas to my apartment was finally turned on today, allowing me to heat the place up without reliance on the sun or my refrigerator's waste product.It's weird how solar noon is around 1:30 PM where I live -- I guess that's the consequence of both daylight savings time (pushing the sunlight to a later time in the day, else sunrise would occur at 4:30 here at the summer solstice) and being on the

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-87877054228274719172009-09-26T17:21:00.004-04:002009-09-26T17:22:53.565-04:00

I bought my first new suit today, with the help of a friend and the staff at the store. (Jacket, pants, dress shirts, shoes, ties.) Once the alterations are done and I get it back, it will probably be the first time I've ever looked not only good but also fashionable.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-61862101638017922872009-09-15T14:07:00.004-04:002009-09-15T15:46:07.754-04:00

One problem I have come across in my trek through the murky swamps of open source libraries and so forth have been occasional issues with shared libraries on the mac. Shared libraries (dylib files on the mac, so files on Linux systems) are modules of code loaded at run time; the binary executables (or other object files) only store a path to the shared library file (and sometimes a version

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-40377488773071139502009-09-11T12:19:00.002-04:002009-09-11T12:21:17.589-04:00

I'm too used to using vim, where Ctrl-w deletes the preceding word in insert mode. (The same shortcut works in the terminal and other places, as well.) The downside is that when I'm on a Windows machine, i.e. using Firefox at the library, trying to delete a word reflexively closes the window in which I'm typing. This has happened three times already and almost happened once while typing in this

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-65915849251156430162009-09-08T15:13:00.005-04:002009-09-09T08:58:47.720-04:00

I spent Labor Day weekend in the U.P. (upper peninsula) camping at Pictured Rocks, and it was phenomenal. The only disappointment of the trip was that the moon was full on the first night (so waning gibbous on the next two): the sky was nearly obliterated by its brightness. On the plus side, it made walking around at night a piece of cake, and I got to see a neat moon-set at dawn, eleven hours

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-47603172562377418672009-08-31T19:33:00.004-04:002009-08-31T19:45:15.648-04:00

Some of my research involves a Russian-developed method called Quasidiffusion, so naturally the appropriate works need to be properly cited. BibTeX, however, was mangling the correctly abbreviated Russian names."Дмитрий Ю. Анистратов" is transliterated as "Dmitriy Yu. Anistratov." Note that the middle initial is one character in the Cyrillic alphabet, but it becomes two Latin characters. Even

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-8146747266516311542009-08-31T17:09:00.003-04:002009-08-31T17:51:45.501-04:00

I've been without internet at my apartment for a month, and I think it suits me well. As perhaps evidenced by the dearth of recent posts, I have a lot more concentration without Google Reader and other sites to compulsively check. I've been forced to focus my thoughts and goals for the day at the beginning of it, rather than being distracted first with whatever news and events have grown

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-38235384662423365672009-08-18T17:03:00.003-04:002009-08-18T17:16:36.502-04:00

I spent the last work week learning about CUDA, the API through which high-power computing can be done on the GPU. After initially getting excited about it, I decided that the limitations of single-precision floating point (on the low-end graphic cards) and memory bandwidth would probably prevent me from trying to port my stuff to it. A surprising amount of research is being accelerated through

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-44769938171421020512009-08-01T11:40:00.003-04:002009-08-01T11:46:30.344-04:00

I just finished a week of packing, moving, and cleaning. I still have a lot of unpacking to do, but at least I'm no longer on a deadline. My new place (still in AA) is a lot nicer than Willowtree.AT&T doesn't have have DSL at my new place, so I'm considering my internet options. The month at Los Alamos where I didn't have internet was actually pretty nice; I may try to go without it for a while

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-62277985030731870192009-07-26T12:28:00.003-04:002009-07-26T13:34:36.755-04:00

The weather here has been simply unbelievable. Partly to enjoy it, and partly for exercise, I went on a bike ride today. And for nerdy data-collecting purposes, I took my car's GPS, reset the statistics, and stuck it in a backpack. Over the half-hour ride, my average speed was 15.8 mph, and I even hit a max of 25.2 without the help of any big hills. (Last Saturday I did go down a big hill and

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-66408452034953009822009-07-21T14:52:00.006-04:002009-07-21T17:01:32.282-04:00

Using CMake as the foundation of my code's build system has really made my life easier. When I add a compiler to /usr/local/bin, even though my PATH is set to prefer binaries in that directory, my old build directories will still compile with the original Apple-installed gcc in /usr/bin, all because CMake uses absolute paths for everything set at configuration time.Experience has also shown me

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-39509629469764074292009-07-20T09:21:00.005-04:002009-07-20T09:30:36.693-04:00

Sitting under a clear blue sky on my porch this morning, I felt two drops of water hit my arm and my foot. I looked up in confusion, wondering if a few drops of rain or condensate on the apartment building had fallen on me. Then I sniffed at the spot on my arm. It smelled like the scented toilet water on airplanes. I'm near enough the Detroit-Wayne airport that planes fly overhead with great

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10936061.post-85559496133102873552009-07-18T23:06:00.002-04:002009-07-18T23:09:46.957-04:00

Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the lifespan of workers and lays up to 2,000 eggs a day.Perhaps "broken news" would have been a more accurate description.

Sethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15756613502474393563noreply@blogger.com0