Watching PBS tonight: “Dr. Wayne Dyer: The Power of Intention.” Holy moly bad stuff. Religion dressed up in authority soaked in pseudoscience. Use the word “energy” enough and people will believe anything you say. “Spirititual energy is the energy of abundance.” What does this even mean? So here is the real question. Why doesn’t the word Hamiltonian achieve as high a standing as energy? Or at least the Lagrangian, for gosh sake! And why no talk of the action. I mean that’s my favorite quantity, the action! No eigenvectors, no eignenvalues, no renormalization group. If you’re going to talk to me, and convince me of your self-help mumbo jumbo, you’d better be talking my launguage!
The Abusing Time, Children's Philosophy, and Trees Post
If there is a clock in the woods and there is no one there to hear it tick, does time pass?
(Corollary question: if there is a clock in the woods and no one is there to hear it tick, do the trees age? Are naturalists killing trees by going camping?)
'Dat 'Plains It
When I’m feeling particularly stupid, I always, like any good citizen, look around to see what or who I can blame for my stupidity. Lately the leading candidate of my excusing has been my age. I mean, according to Nintendo’s Brain Age game, the optimal age is 20. And we are all trained as graduate students that your best work can only be done in your twenties (I’ve long suspected that this is just a way for advisors to get more work out of their graduate students. Certainly the elders who promulgate that meme are pretty damn smart.) So today I was happy to find another good candidate for my excusing. Seattle is America’s Smartest Large City (Large city has a population over 200,000 adults.) Well, of course rankings like this are really silly (this sentence inserted to avoid ranting comments about how silly they are. Of course they are silly. As are most things in life.) But, eat that San Francisco!
Tablet Science
Over at Life as a Physicist, Gordon Watts has a post about using his Tablet PC as a log book for his research (Gordon works in experimental particle physics.) I’ve been doing the same thing for about nine months now: using my tablet to take notes and function as a research lab book (I’ve also been attempting to lead a virtually paperless life: i.e. downloading all of the papers I am reading and reading them on the tablet.) So how do I like the tablet as a replacement for research notebooks?
Well, the first thing I have to say is that it is extremely convenient to have all of your notes in one place. If you convert the handwriting of your notes to text, you can search the notes for text phrases. The handwork recognition works very well (amazingly it seems to work better the faster I write. When I slow down and try to be careful it makes more mistakes!) Of course, the ultimate tool for theorists isn’t yet there: a handwriting to LaTeX convertor!
Another feature I really like is the ability to cut and paste sections of a PDF document into my notes. I use this all the time when I am working through a paper. Cut a bit of the paper. Add your own notes. Cut the next section. Add notes, etc. This is actually something which is very nice to have, because previously I would just work through the paper on a separate sheet of paper, so there was no direct connection with the flow of the paper.
Another fine feature of the tablet is using it with Powerpoint. You can write directly on your slides during a presentation (and save those marks on the presentation for latter viewing.) This is very convenient for answering questions and such during a talk. Last term I used the tablet to deliver powerpoint lectures, with mixed success. This can actually work very well if you do it right. The right way, as far as I can tell, is to use the powerpoint for a broad outline of what you are discussing (pictures, charts, etc.) but to use the pen features for most of the lecture. That way you aren’t just giving a powerpoint presentation (which is always too fast and too cursory for teaching), yet on the other hand you can include the nice features that powerpoint allows: clean clear graphs, charts, diagrams, etc. Unfortunately I don’t think I did this properly during most of the class I taught. Doh! (The other strange thing about using the tablet to lecture is that it is very difficult for me to lecture while standing up with the notebook unless the podium is a very high podium. This means that I have to teach sitting down, which is kind of strange!) Here in the CSE department at UW, they have done some very cool research with Tablet software which allows students who all have tablets to interact with the lecturer and give a very cool interactive touch to the lectures (see here for more info.)
Of course, not everything works perfectly with using the Tablet as a research log book. First of all, as Gordon puts it:
The hardware is certainly up to the task. As usual, the software is lagging: the market for lab notebook emulation software is small.
I’ve been particularly frustrated by the poor cut and paste ability of the notebook taking software I’m using, Microsoft’s Onenote software. I’m hopeful that the upcoming Vista version of Onenote will address many of these issues. Another problem is that the Tablet I own (a Toshiba Tecra) is a monster. What is nice about this is that the screen is great for reading papers (no eye strain). What is bad about this is that the thing weighs a bit and has a fan that is, when doing heavy duty computing tasks, rather loud. I think if I did it again I would go one size down (I’m not a fan of the ultralights, really.)
One problem with the tablet I have, which I’ve been trying to remedy lately, is its use in my office. In my office I have a monitor and docking station for the tablet. Right now when I’m in the office I just use the monitor output. What I’d really like to do is set up the multiple displays so that I can use the Tablet in tablet mode and the monitor in normal mode. What is keeping me from doing this? Well the docking station from Toshiba is slanted such that if you use the laptop in Tablet mode (with the screen pivoted down) the tablet isn’t flat. This wouldn’t be so bad except that the way I normally use the tablet is in portrait mode and then the screen is very very awkward. So I’m trying to figure out a way to rig the docking station so that the screen is level (but so far all my attempts have resulted in very awkward and not very robust setups.)
All in all, I’m very pleased with using my tablet as a research notebook. Now if only they could give me more colors and pens for when I’m doodling on my tablet during a talk 🙂
Summer is Here
Well the exams are graded, final grades will be turned in this Friday, so what’s a guy to do to celebrate the beginning of summer? How about duggout seats at a Seattle Mariners game! That’s right seats right behind the dugout, so that you could put your beer on the dugout and if you yelled at the ump he might mistake you for the coach. Luckily I’m only a mild manner theorist, so no such hijinks came to fruition. Here is a shot from the seats:
The game last night was a good one. A bad call late in the game by the ump (hey I live in Seattle, remember) allowed a grand slam by the opposing Minnesota Twins to tie the game and send it to extra innings. The game was, even at that point, a very long game. In the bottom of the 11th the home crowd got really quiet and a lot of people had headed for their beds. So someone shouted out “I want to go home, Carl!” at the current Seattle batter, Carl Everett, and cracked up the crowd. Well it must have worked! Because two pitches latter he hit a home run over the right field wall to win the game. (And then we were attacked by parents with kids on their shoulders, kids under their arms, and kids hanging onto their legs, who immediately ran to the duggout to see if they could get an autographed ball.)
Summer has officially begun!
Upgrade
I’ve just upgraded my blogging software to the latest version. If you seen anything broken, please let me know.
Update: I’m having major trackback problems. Trackbacks have been disabled.
Not the Library of Babel
This weekend I entered my entire library into librarything. Why would I do this? I don’t really know, but I’ve always been curious how many books I own. The number, as of today, appears to be 858 (including seven duplicates.) For those wishing to see what trash I read, you can find the catelog at this page.
Quant-Ph Press Release
Posted, without comment:
quant-ph/0606017 [abs, ps, pdf, other] :
Title: Can measuring entanglement be easy?
Authors: S.J. van Enk
Comments: No
Summer? We Don't Need No Sticking Summer!
The end of the term is almost here! Summer, also known as, RESEARCH FULLTIME, is almost here. My teaching of “Introduction to Digital Design” is almost complete (okay, grading nearly sixty exams might eat up a bit of my time next week 🙂 ) Histograms of scores are being plotted campus wide. Everywhere students stumble to the final review sessions, their heads swollen from all of the informatinos stuffed inside their head. Rejoince! Rejoice! Summer is almost here!
And what is it doing in Seattle to remind me of this coming event?
Raining.
Okay, enough moping, back to work!
My Dream Scam
Gordon Watts over at Life as a Physicist describes a cool response to (crank) manuscripts purporting to factor large numbers (via The Old New Thing). This reminds me of a scam I once dreamed up. The scam would consist of an email like the one here:
Dear sir or madam!
In today’s modern world, an increasing amount of the world’s commerce is performed over the internet. Most people believe that such financial transactions over the internet are perfectly secure. They do not hesistate to send their credit card over “so-called” secure connections because they have been told by computer scientists that such transactions are secure. But are these transactions really secure? The main reason for the claims of security for these transaction is “that it is hard to factor large numbers?” But why should it be hard to factor large numbers. Certainly my computer can multiply large numbers very rapidly!
Recently, I was pondering this question with deep thought and it occured to me that indeed, rapid factoring of large numbers is indeed possible. In a brilliant flash of insight I have develope a new and revolutionary method for factoring large numbers. Thus I can break the codes used to protect your credit card transactions. That’s right: I can steal money from you the next time you use the internet. Now, I wouldn’t want to do this to you, an anonymous person who I am sure is a law abiding citizen. However, the U.S. patent office will not allow me to patent my algorithm for factoring. Thus I, the great discoverer of an amazing new algorithm will go away from my invention penniless. That’s not how capitalism is supposed to work is it. Thus I am willing to make the following deal with you. If you want to securely use your credit card over the internet again, I am willing to offer you protection from my algorithm for factoring large numbers. The Factoring Protection Plan(TM) will provide you total security for your internet transactions. And it only costs ten U.S. dollars a month. To subscribe to this plan, please click on this link.
Of course, you may not believe that my algorithm can be used to efficiently factor large numbers. But I’m willing to share some of my results with you. For example, when I ran my program on the number
18819881292060796383869723
94616504398071635633794173
82700763356422988859715234
66548531906060650474304531
73880113033967161996923212
05734031879550656996221305
168759307650257059
my program told me that this number is the product of
3980750864240649373971
2550055038649119906436
2342526708406385189575
946388957261768583317
and
4727721461074353025362
2307197304822463291469
5302097116459852171130
520711256363590397527
Amazing, no? Do you need any more proof that your next credit card transaction will not be secure?
I hope that you will make the correct decision and decide to subscribe to my
Yours,
The trapdoor breaker