I got a job, Engineering Scientist Associate, at UT. I'd probably be remiss to post the exact department on my blog. If you are one of the three people who reads this blog, and you want to know, please e-mail me and I'll tell you. Actually, two people already know, so Greg, if you want to know, e-mail me.

I am excited about this. I was worried I'd get a job that would force me to forget most of what I studied: physics, math, digital signal processing. This job will give me opportunities to maintain and build upon my academic foundation. My three year, unrequited love affair with the wave equation can continue; the job involves acoustics. On Tuesday I spent my coop bookstore rebate on a book called "fundamentals of physical acoustics." First chapter, the wave equation. It's easy enough to see that functions with an x-ct (position minus speedconstant times time) parameter shift right on the x axis as you increase t. A pulse glides right on the x axis like a wave, or a lightbike from "Tron." The wave equation is a partial, second order differential equation that, when you plug in tron-bike equations and differentiate like a good calc II student, works. Admittedly, I am still baffled by how mathematicians derived the wave equation. When I really get it--and I must--I will post a long blog entry or pdf document to explain. It has been too long in coming.

More to the point people, CLOSURE. In my Morita pepper blog entry I hinted that I feel that my life is almost too complicated to explain, but here are the lowlights, in sequential order: demeaning office jobs, lost my father to cancer, worked for a three-person multimedia start-up and the boss committed suicide, i made a serious go of it as a tech writer and got laid off, i went back to school and worked my way up from the lowest-level EE courses, selling my condo in the process. A decade of suspense. Of course, I am leaving many things out, many good things, and I am not so naive to assume that everything will be better here on out, but I think at some point you can safely say that you paid some dues.

Currently reading a fascinating book, Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence." He invented the Palm Pilot and went on to study neuroscience. His book attempts to explain the human mind as if it were an operating system. 50 years ago, a lot of his analogies and suppositions would have seemed trivial. Such as, intelligence is being able to infer from a siren that a fire truck is coming, we don't have to actually ID the truck visually. Big deal. But the point he makes is that our ability to predict outcomes is distinctively human, possible due to our large neocortex, the "new rind" around our more primitive inner brain. The upshot of computers and AI might not be that we eventually write intelligent computer programs, but that by writing computer programs we become able to appreciate the aspects of intelligence that are not "computational." Hawkins and his pals are out to build neocortex-like systems. I think this has fascinating implications for the field I am getting into. I would bet money that the kinds of systems I will be working on rely on instantaneous detection and recognition of patterns in the environment, and that the idea of recognizing patterns by correlating with stored "memories" of prior patterns has not been tried. I hope I'll be able to blog about it.

On the difference between pushing and merely leaning in to something.

I jog west, at a leisurely pace, by the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue. It's just after 7PM, dark, the trail is almost empty. Two guys pass me. The first one is thin and moving fast, the other looks like a butterball. I decide to keep pace with him, to see if he is really that fast or simply sprinting a 1 mile dash. We wind over hills, under Lamar, into the dark trees on the north edge of zilker, up and over a few hills. As we approach the footbridge near Robert E. Lee I realize the butterball is deceptively fast. He is not kicking his knees up so much as floating over earth with a quick scissor movement of the legs. I start breathing heavy. My feet make noisy, almost angry sounds on the planks of the footbridge as I chase him. I stay about 20 feet behind him for about a mile. We run up a tall hill, then down into a small arroyo, then up where the Zilker Zephyr mini train tracks cross. I am going much faster than usual. Up the hill, my feet seem to make tight, solid contact, and I think "I HAVE to be gaining ground on him." Perhaps one or two feet of gained ground, that's it. By the time we get to the Mopac bridge I go all out and pass him. I break my imaginary finish line at the north end of the bridge. He claps me on the shoulder a few seconds later, says "keep pushing" and floats into the street and up the hill towards Enfield. I shout "thank you, man" without hesitating. It was inspiring.

I noticed from the neck up he looked tough. (sure, sure) I'll have to start wearing a watch and report how fast I am actually running the 4.5 mile Mopac-to-Congress loop. I run .5 mile warm up on a track, and started doing .5 miles of sprint, cool-down. I'd like to get up into the 7-12 mile range and possibly do a half-marathon.

My fingertips are burning. A few hours ago I was cooking with Morita peppers, which are simply roasted red jalapenos that you buy in a little celophane bag. They add a powerful, smoky aroma to stews. Lately I've been on a guisada kick but this might be my cue to try something else. Pain! I did the dishes, thinking it would wash off the hot but it simply aggravated it.

Watched a very strange movie tonight on TCM, The Devil-Doll starring Lionel Barrymore. His character, Paul Lavond, is a fugitive who teams up with the widow of a mad scientist in order to make miniature dolls out of his enemies. For most of the movie he hobbles around in a dress, in disguise as an old woman, talking in an absurd falsetto. When his last standing enemy confesses to the police and exonerates him, the lab and the widow conveniently explode, freeing him to make amends with his long lost daughter. In the most powerful scene in the movie he sees his daughter out of costume but chooses to lie to her that her father is actually dead. The practical reason he does this is unclear to me, but from an emotional level, you sense that he has done SO much weird shit that he can't possibly explain himself to the people he loves. message: We can become such weird creatures that it becomes impossible to explain ourselves, or to love. Yet the movie ends with him saying "this is the best day of my life." Such a movie would never be made today. Yet it expresses something real.

Robotic Fish.

"here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is...the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succesion moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself."

-- Joan Didion, The New York Times Magazine, September 25, 2005

I recently read Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers, about the rich and deliberately obscured history of non-religious moral leadership in this country. And interviewed her last Saturday, which was terrific. I have Rob Brezsny, the syndicated astrologist, coming on in two weeks. So all of this freethinking has led me to question my own religious beliefs.

I recently discovered that when really pressed to the wall, I become a good Catholic. I apologize, sincerely, to some sort of deity, for my sins, and vow to do better. I don't know if this is human nature or whether by being baptised Catholic 33 years ago, a very subtle element was added to my personality. I suppose I could find out by studying rituals of contrition, repentance, in other religions.

But what Didion seems to be saying is that it's all window dressing. Only people add meaning to life.

a perk of my new gold's gym membership is a free personal training session. a trainer named chris analyzed my walk, posture, and squat, and concluded that I had overpronation of the shoulders, one leg longer than the other, and really tight (in a bad way) legs. He had me lay on the ground and proceeded to roll a foam rolling pin over the backs of my legs. a quick and painful way to stretch out and untangle the hamstrings. when all was said and done he sketched a pyramid for me and said that I needed to spend three weeks doing stretches--the bottom tier of the pyramid, a place without weights or machines, rolling around on a big pink ball, similar to rehab. at the side of the pyramid he wrote "886." What is 886 I asked. After some hemming and hawing, he admitted that it was the cost (in dollars) of the pyramid, or at least the cost to lead me up it. i had no idea the hour we were spending was a sales pitch, the first time I enrolled at Gold's I took the free training and the guy basically gave me a cruddy workout routine and said good luck. so until 886 i was really liking all that chris was saying.

he has me believing that the reason I have had problems breaking my 4-mile running limit, is not my aerobic capacity but the fact that a large percentage of my muscles are simply too knotted up to contribute to the effort. he also denigrated my previous workout routine, so the next time i go back, i am not sure what to do with myself that he would approve of. I am thinking I'll try the free yoga classes they offer, and keep running 3 days a week. if i ever get a job, i might spend the 886. chris seemed to be saying that in 6 weeks he could utterly transform me physically, from a hunched over, knotted me into a pressed, svelte me who can easily run 10ks. for the time being, though, i will keep trying to train myself.

Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana has declared today a day of prayer. Wouldn't it have been nice for her to declare a "day of pragmatic thinking." Or "a day during which we perform our thoughtful contingency plan." Or even "a day of selfless behavior." But a day of PRAYER. As if the south needs that. We might as well have a press conference with Joyce Meyer, who seems to have more resources at her disposal.

I had taken beautiful movie of Lobo settling into bed, but alas, SBC Yahoo! does not let me post it.

I've been summoned for jury duty! Something to finally blog about. People, grab your cutlery and tuck in that napkin, because I am going to be adjudicating.

The most coherent arguments I've heard in favor of staying the course in Iraq have been from Bill Kristol. He describes the aftermath of a pullout as follows:

"Since Iraqi troops won't be as capable as American ones, the situation will deteriorate. Then the insurgency could become a full-fledged guerrilla war, inviting a civil war--and we would be faced with a choice between complete and ignominious withdrawal or a recommitment of troops."

Ignominous, "Marked by shame or disgrace"

This scenario should at least be on the minds of the people in Crawford. The first image that leaps to mind is officially endorsed massacres of minority groups in Iraq.
Years and years of sunnis and shiites with RPG launchers skittering about on our television sets. Murders we won't see and won't feel.

I do support a pull-out. What Kristol assumes is that the "ignominious" outcome has not already been reached. His idea of shame is just as valid as Cindy Sheehan's. Our government has acted shamefully, from the top (Bush) to the bottom (Abu Ghraib). And currently, the same idiots who convinced us to go into Iraq (Kristol) are using the same doom-scenario technique to prod us en masse towards escalation. No.

Nobody understood what makes Iraq tick THEN, and I'll be damned if I go along with more pundits telling me they think they understand Iraq NOW. There is no serious analysis going on. I suppose what must be next for Anti-War supporters is to formulate a credible withdrawal plan. Doing the homework of explaining how a horrible civil war might NOT happen, or at least explaining why we are still OK allowing Iraq to go to hell...but wait it has gone to hell.

Erin Collier, the Austin Chronicle's marketing director, was my guest today on Writing on the Air. She brought six or seven different jars/tubs of salsa for me to try, and a bag of chips. We agreed that she'd come on only this week, after I had posted a blurb in the Chron announcing I'd be playing readings from Billy Collins and Denise Levertov. So the show was a weird mix of Erin and I making silly comments about hot sauce and then playing austere, serious poetry. Billy Collins, not too austere, but Levertov's "Life at War" dealing with "burned human flesh in Vietnam" was austere. It seemed to work. Ironically, Erin was one my most lively, funny guests, and she isn't a writer, which means I either need to find better guests or do a different type of show. Maybe the "feed Graham show."

Latest news. I have graduated. My freelancing clients have me documenting the second version of their rich site summary (RSS) reader, quicknews. Which Julie is familiar with, having written an excellent first book on the subject.

Via RSS I learned that Wil Wheaton, ensign crusher from star trek next generation, has made a name for himself as a blogger and technical writer.
He has a book "Just a Geek" which is supposedly a touching tale of what it means to be human. Many stars. Whodathought.

I watched Bill Maher standup for 90 minutes on HBO last night "I'm Swiss" and agreed with practically everything he shouted. For example, he points out that putting the ten commandments in front of a courthouse is dumb because 8 of them aren't actual laws. Don't covet thy neighbor's wife, for instance, is not a law. He criticized Bush for everything, including the stinging observation that he benefitted from the "safe" national guard of the 60s only to make it an extremely dangerous military branch to join in the 00s.

What I'm getting at is that I don't think I have anything to SAY anymore. Wil Wheaton's take on technology is more interesting than mine (having served on the Enterprise) and Bill Maher is 100x more prolific.

The reason summer box office receipts are down? It's the 15 minutes of fucking commercials they make you watch. (my impersation of Bill Maher with my own observation) See, he's better at it.

Bill Maher has also been the only person I ever heard directly make fun of Christianity. He is like a bulldozer charging a barbed wire fence. Richard Wright's book "Black Boy" describes communist speakers carrying on like Bill Maher. The narrator stands in the street in 1930s chicago and some guy with a bullhorn yells out to a crowd, "Where the hell is this Jesus, strike me down now. I'm WAITING." I like this side of America.

Oh, here is a 2.4 MB video of my senior project in action. I do not want to go into detail as this was not a very good project, other than perhaps the fact that we got it to do anything. The clicking sound is me turning the frequency knob on a signal generator. The device uses a coarse scheme for picking out the frequency as I raise it from 0-20000 hz.

Ugh. What a past few days. My night of three beers turned into a morning of acute stomach virus. Probably something I ate. I had no time to spare on the senior project so I worked through it. This morning Ryan and I demoed a successful sound-interactive light tile (see pic). I was honored to be a part of the experience, but getting home, seeing my picture, and still feeling unwell, I feel sort of ragged.

Sitting around here with Lobo, the abiding snooze-hound. Turner Classics is on. When they announce "a day of Shelly Winters" I get thrills dreaming about August 14th when I can sit on my ass and enjoy "a day of anyone who ever sat in front of a camera but who cares, i have earned my degree and am drinking a screwdriver." Actually, I'm drinking now. I came home to find Matt and Andrew Dickens drinking scotch, so I drank beer to fit in, now I'm here in the living room with the dog and my third bottle of beer.

Some weird James Cagney movie, blood on the sun, where american crackerjack journalists duck and weave around japanese imperialists.

A few nights ago I watched Lost in Translation for the first time. The characters still sit with me, after four days. That was Scarlett's role, she was that character. Vain as this may sound, the movie reminded me of my 1997 tour of Japan with the JIMT program, when I was put up in expensive hotels and was dying for human contact.

This rocks. I got an A in telecommunications networks, my last lecture/exam course, and a B in Laplace Transforms (the 6 week course I agonized over taking at the start of the summer). I have no idea what's next, but I'm wrapping up in style.

However, I have only 6 days in which to make my senior project presentable for the ECE open house. It's currently a C3P0 good heavens pile of crap. Trying to get a PIC microcontroller to communicate via USB is interesting. This morning I was able to transmit two integers from the PIC to the console. Hey, I can just stop now, that's a pretty snazzy senior exhibit.

i want a boston terrier. it's the only motivation i have to move out of matt's house.

this kid is brilliant.

notice how he answers both parts of the favorite word question with only one word.

i don't know, i hope he stays in canada.

nothing's easy

i just found out that a graduation requirement enacted in Fall 2004 requires me to take a technical elective in upper level math, astronomy, biology, or chemistry. i am faced with two options, A) take a third course this summer in fourier analysis that meets at 7AM, 5 days a week. or B) wait to take such a course in the fall and postpone graduation by five months.

the first option would result in a hellish 11 weeks, beginning immediately. i have never attempted more than 7 credit hours in a summer; this scheme would load me with 10 and jeopardize the success of my senior lab. the second option would require me to find a part-time job or internship in the fall, which is probably more difficult than just finding a full-time job.

going with the first option would show that I value my time, that i'm eager to graduate and go to work ASAP.

The second option would allow me to take interesting upper division courses in the fall such as the network engineering lab and the computer architecture course taught by yale patt. i'll never get another chance to take courses such as this. i could also choose an upper division math course i want rather than the only one that is available.

the first option seems more ambitious and bold, get the diploma and turn the page. since I'm 33, this seems smart. this is what i think 80 percent of people in my position would do.

the second option seems more cautious but also more optimistic, READ the page before turning it, and trust that you will make yourself into a stronger job candidate with the extra time.

i think i'm going to push ahead with plan A, take 10 credit hours this summer and begin a real job search now. this means i could relocate, get out of matt's hair, and feel like i'm not backing off. i'll check out the fourier class tomorrow morning. if it looks bad i can reconsider.





so

first denial then acceptance

the only issue i have with star wars III is that it was a Frito-Lay retail display at HEB four weeks before it opened as a movie. sith settles like a 100 million dollar layer of nacho cheese on every other serial/saga/shootemup that came before it. we are creating so much stuff for our children to watch that eventually they will never be able to reach bottom. yet, we will hand them a polluted environment, inadequate health care, budget defecits, and an estranged third world.

i don't know about you, but into my 30s my whole existence has begun to feel like a movie. impressive, unattainable things shoot back and forth across the screen but i am compelled, compulsed, to just reach for the next kernel of popcorn. in my case, next piece of odwalla bar.

always in the back of my mind when viewing a summer blockbuster is the sense of seeing a precious resource go up in flames. we witness how wealth, put in the hands of a privileged few, results in packaged messages that can only be heard when sitting silently and obediently in a theater. there is no natural law that requires millions of people to submit to the artistic vision of one man. all men are created equal, and with enough practice we could convert our cineplexes into public assembly halls, and entertain each other with music, lectures, strip tease, perhaps leaving ONE theatre open for film.

then again, my discontent over what is only a free market process is stupid. confining. i will continue going to the movies, enjoying the movies, and rather than allow some doubt to tickle the back of my conscience, i will just say "this is what it is."

I am writing to say that George Lucas deserves canonization, beyond the usual Oscars fanfare for “lifetime achievment.” We should build a large bronze monument in his image. After all, he sustained a vision for 28 years. He created his own standards and put his evolution as a filmmaker out there for all to see. He made no apologies or conciliation to critics.

When I was six years old, sitting between my Mom and Dad in a crowded movie theatre in Queens, the sight of an enormous blue imperial cruiser coming into view, carrying Darth Vader and his ominous respirations, made my palms sweat and instantly began shaping my concepts of right and wrong, darkness and light. Christmas 1977 I got a red T-shirt with the reflective silver adhesive letters, “Star Wars.” I’d talk to grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, about Star Wars. I would play Star Wars (one note at a time) on piano. I also knew that I did not have the full story regarding Star Wars. My father, already an Alec Guiness fan, remarked that he thought Obi Wan was the most interesting character, that the force actually did exist, that the beginning of Star Wars was not really the beginning, etc. (This was a man who took philosophy courses at Columbia and had a rough childhood, who was practically a kid himself in 1977.) As a result I imagined what the Jedis were like; in daydreams I would ponder why and how Darth Vader was once “good.” It amazes me that 28 years later I would find my curiosity on these matters still intact, that George Lucas could plant seeds of wonder in children, allow those seeds to sit for decades, and then complete his story only after the children had become adults. Unlike any filmmaker I can think of, he extended his epic vision over an epic length of time, providing a new mythology that an entire generation could share.

Some critics are currently trashing his work. They whine that the characters seem wooden, or make fun of Hayden Christianson’s performance, blithely ignoring the fact that if George Lucas gave up on making films or decided to just skip doing episode III, it would have thrown millions of people such as me into an abyss. George Lucas ignored the naysayers, determined to finish what he started. As a result he brought us full circle back to our childhoods. He gives a sense of wisdom, a sense of gratitude for having been born when we were and having waited 28 years for an answer.

The scene with Padme’s funeral procession shows a silent, mournful JarJar Binks (an object of many critics' ridicule) and several exotically facepainted, headdress-wearing Naboo characters. Putting JarJar into the movie at any other moment would have drawn guffaws from the audience. Lucas puts him there in a cunning way, as if to say "try laughing now." They walk in a beautifully gloomy evening light, more sophisticated in terms of set design and lighting than anything attempted in episodes IV, V, and VI. Lucas effectively scolds his critics here, showing that his “phantom menace” characters had value, or at least that his attention to costume and atmosphere grew substantially via these characters. Compared to Leia’s hair buns the Naboo facepaint and headdress is exquisite. Perhaps, Lucas suggests, you were all too insensitive to appreciate the new things I tried.

I predict that Lucas’ next film will be less about fighting and more about fantasy. He is going to deliver a true modern incarnation of Fantasia, something that absorbs a new generation in heavenly forms, high resolution color, perhaps a little mathematical precision. Hopefully he’ll also discover the next Harrison Ford (female or male) and recapture the daring feel of the first Star Wars.