Posted on Sunday, May 30, 2010 at
So, it just occured to me that I haven’t updated on the status of the reprap in a while. Obviously, I didn’t finish the metal mendel, although my partner in crime is moving the project forward while he stays for summer school. I think the metal mendel will be finished by the time summer is over, too: we were at least halfway done, and now he has a bunch more time on his hands to put into the project.
Posted on Saturday, May 29, 2010 at
While starting to read through the Feynman Lectures, I thought of this: In Starship Troopers, a certain planet has less competitive wildlife because it happens to be orbiting a star that puts out less mutation-inducing radiation than our own star, with the hidden implication that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” However, a good balance of mutations is evolutionarily beneficial (I think his basic premise is correct: more mutations mean more variation, and hence better fitness), such that life on the planet should evolve less genetic safeguards (assuming a similar biology to us), leading to a similar rate of mutation.
Posted on Thursday, May 27, 2010 at
So, I’ve had some ups and downs in the 2 weeks since school ended. I’ll be focusing on one particular thing, which is the distributed computing cluster me and a friend set up to crunch through solutions to the optimization problem I’ve been looking at.
Well, you may be thinking, you have a computing cluster? In that case, man, you’ve got it made! The sky’s the limit when you’ve got a computing cluster!
Posted on Monday, May 24, 2010 at
Two-fer-one night!
Status: I’m finally home.
Home.
You should be happy you're home.
That's what they said.
That's what they all said.
They never had to come home to empty cities.
Empty streets.
Empty building.
Empty people.
He had to fight.
Fight a war.
All by himself.
Well, that wasn't true.
The leeks were good fighters, but terrible leaders.
They needed a leader.
He led them into battle.
He won every battle except the one that mattered the most to him.
Posted on Monday, May 24, 2010 at
Status update: Chasing after a dream! --- "You're what?"
"Yeah, I'm a dream chaser. It's my 9 to 5, you know." Wiry smile.
"Never would've thought you the type to go chasing dreams. What gives?"
"You know me, I was always the deranged romantic," he said with a bit of a smile. Of course, that wasn't the real reason: he hadn't cared much for romance or romantic ideals since the last war reduced all human or quasi-human populations below 1 percent their pre-war levels.
Posted on Friday, May 21, 2010 at
Well, I finally got moved into an actual server. Hopefully I get to stick around!
Edit: Oh, and the site is a LOT snappier, even when it’s in a completely different location.
Posted on Friday, May 7, 2010 at
Sorry about the broad title: I’m going to be talking about a whole lot of things.
First things first, I’m almost done with this iteration of the academic school year! Exciting.
The metal reprap is coming along: it’s coming along at a good clip, but man, if it makes it, it’s gonna be close. I have a week-ish left, while finals are going on. It is going to be interesting: unfortunately, I don’t have any money, and I can’t get belts or extruder parts.
Posted on Saturday, May 1, 2010 at
Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here: since then, I’ve switched to being a comp eng major, got my financial aid stuff, and am probably going to Columbia. Fun times.
However, it’s the first time that I’ve really felt the weight of the cost of my schooling. For some reason, I’ve never realized just how much $10,000 was worth (much less $20,000, or $30,000). It’s amazing that I consented to go to college with the costs as high as they are: I can understand why I did, but man, it’s just so much money.