Caltech astronomer Mike Brown is best known as the man who killed Pluto. It so happens that his office is nearby, and that today a ghost of planets past came to haunt him.
OBFUSCATED TUNNEL ADVENTUREZ
Howdy Folks. Do I ever have a treat for you!
Some background: There exist a system of steam tunnels under Caltech, and for many years (at least 40 or so) undergraduate have been running amok in them causing all kinds of trouble. There is apparently access to every building on campus through these tunnels, and there is a written and artistic history of undergraduate life painted and Sharpied onto the walls.
So I came by these photos of some grad student hoodlums exploring these tunnels. Since this blog is so intimately linked with my identity at Caltech, lets leave names out of it, shall we? Anyway, some of the photos were so outstanding, I decided they needed to be shared here, on Coffee Nanoparticles.
Figure 1: Wow, Caltech undergrads. That brings about an awfully visceral and disturbing image. Must help to keep the god-fearing folk out of the tunnels.
Figure 2: The entrance to the tunnels proper. Into the rabbit hole.
Figure 3: This is what the tunnels look like. Some of these pipes carry steam, so it is quite hot in there. (Or so I hear)
Figure 4: True dat.
Figure 5: So this one deserves a bit of a story. The Dean of Undergraduate Students here (Rod Kiewiet) has instituted a strict and obviously well-respected rule to no longer go into the steam tunnels, citing "safety issues". So someone was kind enough to immortalize this rule on the wall of an alcove somewhere under Bridge Laboratory.
Figure 6: HAH valence band. GET IT?!
Figure 7: Caltech legend tells of a bet made by Nobellist and well-known badass Richard Feynman of QED fame with the undergraduate physics class. If they performed up to Feynman-par (likely about an A++ average or thereabouts), he would live in the tunnels for a week. Naturally Caltech undergrads cheated or something and did not disappoint, leading to Feynman setting up a couple mattresses and a supremely creepy swing-set here in the steam tunnels.
Figure 7: There was also a "SAY N
2O to DRUGS" graffito somewhere.
Figure 8: It really looks to me like the one on the right is saying "Kiss me, I'm Irish", and for some reason the one on the left looks awfully good at being crazy smart.
Well, that was mostly full of figures, but I hope you got a bit of a taste of what the tunnels are like. It is really too bad we're not allowed to go down there. In a hypothetical world in which we were, I would surely be well on my way to mapping it and exploring every nook and cranny.
Lets take a look at my allowed domain, then. I just moved into a new and improved office! My lab dominates about 90% of the basement of Noyes Laboratory of Chemical Physics, which means that no one has an office with a window. But now at least I have a couch, a table, a whiteboard and a sweet monitor. Check it out!
Figure 9: It is super duper comfy, cats and kittens. Srsly.
Figure 10: OMG SO BRIGHT. Who do those awesome happy-looking orange lab goggles on the wall belong to?
New Website
Hello folks,
I've put together a semi-professional website and given it the honour of being www.coffeenanoparticles.com. It just has a bit of a speil on yours truly and background into my past research and publications. It also has a super sweet photo of me that I chose out of every single photo ever taken to be the most representative of me.
I'm talking about it here and linking it above (hey, let's do it again!) since I know that Google crawls this page, and now Google will follow those links and crawl my new page.
Also, let's add a link here for Michael Beverland's website. I did him a favour and gave him my stylesheet to put together a pretty website with very colour-coordinated (if a little bit camp) images.
I've put together a semi-professional website and given it the honour of being www.coffeenanoparticles.com. It just has a bit of a speil on yours truly and background into my past research and publications. It also has a super sweet photo of me that I chose out of every single photo ever taken to be the most representative of me.
Hey look, it's me doing SCIENCE in JAPAN. (See those squigglies to my right?)
I'm talking about it here and linking it above (hey, let's do it again!) since I know that Google crawls this page, and now Google will follow those links and crawl my new page.
Also, let's add a link here for Michael Beverland's website. I did him a favour and gave him my stylesheet to put together a pretty website with very colour-coordinated (if a little bit camp) images.
Goodbye again, Canada. Hello Cali!
Some updates, ladies and gents. I've graduated and convocated! As proof, I present my refrigerator:
My Bachelors of Applied Science in Nanotechnology Engineering. Mickey's is there too.
Don't worry guys, I haven't gone back to the exceedingly far east or anywhere like it. In fact I've gone to the west coast, first to LA and just a little bit backwards to Pasadena, California. I've found a new academic home at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech. Now I know I said I wanted to go to Princeton or Berkeley or MIT in my last post, but come on guys, Caltech is in (or at least very near) Los Angeles! LA comes with some perks such as being 25-30 degrees and sunny 350 days per year. Hollywood, Disneyland, Long Beach, Comicon, need I say more? If I do need to say more, its arguably the best science and technology school in the world.
Besides, Princeton is in New Jersey, everyone at MIT is depressed (hopefully excepting my good friend Farnaz) and Berkeley is a STATE school (sorry Simon :-\).
So at the rate I've been reviving this blog, by the next time I post, I'll have finished my PhD and be moving into wherever I do my post-doc. Hard to move up from this place though. I think this place will become a pretty great home for the next 4-8 years.
I've become such a goddamn American already. Mickey got a big TV and American's Got Talent has been on for the last 3 hours.
Balls.
Pretty much what Caltech is like. Courtesy of NUMB3RS.
I've been here for about a week, and I've got to say that its been quite great. Everyone has been incredibly friendly, even by Canadian standards. Moving in with my furry friend presented me with no problems, and the apartment is a veritable mansion by Japanese standards. I walked into my bedroom, and its maybe double the size of my entire house in Japan. And theres a WHOLE APARTMENT outside!
I live about a three minute walk from my lab, which is pleasantly situated in a basement's basement. At least it'll stay cool during the long, hard summers? In this lab, I'm working on super hardy, super specific AND super general artificial antibodies for HIV diagnostics. Wrap your mind around that one. It'll keep me busy at the very least until September, when my classes begin. At which point I'll have to prove my mettle to all the genius-level intellects running around this Institute.
Its SoCal guys, the infinite corridor can be outside. (Also a frequent filming site for NUMB3RS, see above)
I've become such a goddamn American already. Mickey got a big TV and American's Got Talent has been on for the last 3 hours.
Balls.
Fuji-san continued.
Here goes -- Fuji pictures as promised! It was really dark and not a lot of pictures were taken during the ascent. Most are of the spectacular view at the end. Makes sense, ne?
Maybe 1000 meters later, the Subashiri 7th Station. I enjoyed this picture so I took a picture of it. Toilets were $2.50.
Yes, I'm checking my Kindle. When Amazon says free 3G internet everywhere on earth, they mean it. Full bars at 3200 meters elevation on Fuji-san.
I eventually woke up. I'm huge in Japan. I wish I brought my puffy pink snowsuit.
Beginning of the sunrise.
We beat the crowd and had the best seats in the house. The crowd is now accumulating and flowing back down the east slope.
PRETTY!
PRETTIER!
PRETTIEST!
Starting to lighten up more... Thats our cue.
We proceed to get the hell out of there. 2000 vertical meters of the descent was through a lava flow that was composed of one foot deep volcanic ash/sand. It was straight going at a >45 degree decline. You could run, but we just sludged through it. Needless to say my shoes are destroyed.
I've got some more but thats all for now. Later folks.
Fuji: Check.
I conquered Fuji-san. Shirt credit to Shrey. Thanks dude!
Yes those are clouds behind and below me. Yes the view was nice. Yes it was an incredibly long and tiring climb. And yes, I did it in fucking jeans. I am become regret. More pictures to come.
The single greatest human being I've yet encountered.
Good evening, cats and kittens.
Man, I have officially turned into a softy. Check out this video over at the BBC and tell me you felt nothing. I will send you a self-addressed stamped envelope to turn in your human being card.
Man, I have officially turned into a softy. Check out this video over at the BBC and tell me you felt nothing. I will send you a self-addressed stamped envelope to turn in your human being card.
Awwww.... Kitty!! This works even on highly educated bionic veterinarians.
Not only has this doctor devoted his research to giving prosthetic feet to cats in need (talk about a niche market), but he is an incredible badass and all around cool guy. In my opinion you can tell a lot about a person in how they treat cats (this may apply to dogs too, but I'm a cat lover). Giving amputee cats prosthetic feet is pretty much a perfect score on this test.
This doctor is a complete champ. He obviously cares a hell of a lot about this animal, hes well versed in both the aesthetic concerns of kitties (brown bionic feet on a black cat, no way) and the usefulness of duct tape in any of life's problems (you're doing it wrong). "Surgical high five, dude!" I mean, I'm not sure thats completely sterile, but it more than makes up for it in awesomeness. The nurses are just shaking their heads at this point at how badass their doc is.
Siks milyon doller kitty can leep tal bildingz, lol. But seriously folks, this probably cost a lot.
Are there any cat related nanotech innovations I can do to emulate the good Dr. Noel? This guy is just my hero.
P.S. @Mikhail: In the first sentence of the article below the video, I read "peg" as "PEG" (ie. polyethylene glycol) and was like "Damnit, I KNEW PEGylation could fix anything!" Then I was disappointed. Throw some TOPO in that shit.
P.P.S. @Jess and any other non-Gourmands: That meal I just ate was a full 2500 calories of KFC chicken and fries and chocolate chip cookie dough-based desert. Ugghhhmmmmmm...
P.P.P.S. @All gBuzz users: I've temporarily turned off the link between here and Buzz because for some reason I'm getting a billion copies in my work inbox and its kinda annoying. Forwarding issue, likely.
I hardly think "Coffee-stain effect" is a scientific term
You know coffee nanoparticles is the name of this blog (with a much more apropos subtitle – which I will have to change once I return to the western world. Except for the steampunk romance part – that was pure clairvoyance), I haven’t actually spoken about coffee nanoparticles since my very first (and very brief) post. There I proposed the question: “Coffee – nanoparticle suspension or dissolved solution?”
Well now, my pretties, I feel I may have come to an answer. I do a lot of reading of recently published papers in a few of my favourite scientific journals (JACS, Nanoletters, Langmuir, Advanced Functional Materials, Nature Materials/Nano, etc) since I feel like this practice increases my chances of having a basic understanding of most problems or systems I’m likely to come across in work and at school.
Yesterday I was perusing Langmuir (a surface science paper, nanos can recall that this is the Langmuir of Langmuir isotherm/Blodgett films fame) and came across this paper: “Coffee-Ring Effect-Based Three Dimensional Patterning of Micro/Nanoparticle Assembly with a Single Droplet” by a group out of Berkeley. Obviously the first word caught my eye, the rest is just icing on the mocha, so to speak. The paper is pretty self explanatory, they just suspend some micro and nanoparticles in some solution, make a droplet, wait for it to evapourate, then watch the “coffee-ring effect” do its work in the form of a self-assembled circular microscructure composed of your particles. Take a looksee at the figure below.
Mmmm, coffee self assembly.
Anyway this isn’t what is important at all. This is just a new take on existing methods that exist to make such shapes and structures that we’ve looked into ad nauseum and inscribed in the tiniest of hands on our Nanofab cheat sheets. What’s important comes later:
And I quote: “Our technique is mainly grounded on the coffee-ring effect of solutes in an evaporating suspension. When a spilled drop of coffee dries on a solid surface, it leaves a dense, ring-like deposit along the perimeter. Such ring deposits are common wherever drops containing dispersed [nano]particulate solids evaporate on a surface.”
[Editor's node: I added a prefix I think the authors accidentally missed.]
There it is, spelled out in black and white in a peer reviewed journal. He even cites a reference for the last claim, so you know its legit. Coffee is a [nano]particulate solid dispersion. Just so we’re all clear now. I drank coffee nanoparticles this morning.
Well now, my pretties, I feel I may have come to an answer. I do a lot of reading of recently published papers in a few of my favourite scientific journals (JACS, Nanoletters, Langmuir, Advanced Functional Materials, Nature Materials/Nano, etc) since I feel like this practice increases my chances of having a basic understanding of most problems or systems I’m likely to come across in work and at school.
Yesterday I was perusing Langmuir (a surface science paper, nanos can recall that this is the Langmuir of Langmuir isotherm/Blodgett films fame) and came across this paper: “Coffee-Ring Effect-Based Three Dimensional Patterning of Micro/Nanoparticle Assembly with a Single Droplet” by a group out of Berkeley. Obviously the first word caught my eye, the rest is just icing on the mocha, so to speak. The paper is pretty self explanatory, they just suspend some micro and nanoparticles in some solution, make a droplet, wait for it to evapourate, then watch the “coffee-ring effect” do its work in the form of a self-assembled circular microscructure composed of your particles. Take a looksee at the figure below.
Mmmm, coffee self assembly.
Anyway this isn’t what is important at all. This is just a new take on existing methods that exist to make such shapes and structures that we’ve looked into ad nauseum and inscribed in the tiniest of hands on our Nanofab cheat sheets. What’s important comes later:
And I quote: “Our technique is mainly grounded on the coffee-ring effect of solutes in an evaporating suspension. When a spilled drop of coffee dries on a solid surface, it leaves a dense, ring-like deposit along the perimeter. Such ring deposits are common wherever drops containing dispersed [nano]particulate solids evaporate on a surface.”
[Editor's node: I added a prefix I think the authors accidentally missed.]
There it is, spelled out in black and white in a peer reviewed journal. He even cites a reference for the last claim, so you know its legit. Coffee is a [nano]particulate solid dispersion. Just so we’re all clear now. I drank coffee nanoparticles this morning.
Birthday Festivities in T-dot
Very tired at the moment, so only the highlights right now, cats and kittens. The destination was Tokyo (more specifically Shibuya ward) for my birthday festivities. We went to Kujira-ya (awesome whale meat restaurant) for the main course, and then back to the Lock Up izakaya (see my previous post with Nikki's Lock Up experience) for drinks and apres diner goodness.
I forgot my camera, unfortunately. I really seem to do this a lot, so I didn't get many good pictures, having only my cell phone camera at the time. I got zero pictures from the whale restaurant, which was lame. They had a great, short and to the point sign right at their entrance boldly proclaiming "WHALE MEAT ONLY". You know you're at the right place when you see this.
We had lean whale sashimi (as opposed to blubber sashimi. ick), whale blubber bacon, tempura whale, fried whale, and whale steaks. Along with rice for everyone. We all agreed the teriyaki whale steak was by far the best (followed by the fried whale, which looks like its encased in salt), and if we ever go again, we will just buy a bunch of whale steaks. mmmmmmmmm. I also want to taste the caudal fin special. No word on what kind of whales these were, but they tasted intelligent.
There was quite a wait at the izakaya, so we grabbed some pre-game Starbucks at the busiest Starbucks in the world (but not nearly as busy as the SLC Tim Hortons) and headed back. Unfortunately in the interim we lost a bunch of people to late night cross-Japan trips and picnicking plans. But we were ready to sojourn on.
I told them it was my birthday, so I got the VIP treatment with visits from monsters and murderers and everything. Plus some free cake with a sparker, yay!
One of my drinks. It came with a pipette and everything! No dry ice in this one though. :(
Lars injecting his alcohol right into his veins. Hardcore.
Arianna got a litre of beer in a massive graduated cylinder.
We picked this plate to munch on just by looking at the pictures. Turns out it was fried chicken joints. Ugh.
These capsules were so tempting we had to order them. I tried asking the waiter what they were, but all he said was "Spirit Capsules". Skkketttcchh.
We opened one beforehand to figure out whats in them. Tasted like very very potent food-coloured Whiskey or something. It had an alcohol rating of three skulls on the menu, but theres no way it could be that strong, even that amount of pure ethanol isn't much.
This one was wayyy stronger. Just called "Blue Spirit" on the menu, we cooled it and then did shots out of the test tubes. Arianna complained that test tubes were less than ideal vessels for shooting out of.
At one point the lights went off (and black lights went on), followed by an invasion by monsters and murderers and stuff into our cell. Awesomely, this ended by playing the "Ghostbusters" theme song repeatedly and having a bunch of scantily clad "police-ladies" running around with cap guns shooting all the monsters.
My birthday cake with my name on it (Bureiku).
On the way back to Shibuya station. These "Who is my boss?" docomo ads are all over the place suddenly. They feature Darth Vader speaking Japanese in the commercials, and its fantastic. There are three or four massive (10+ storey) TVs surrounding this intersection, and docomo has their Vader ad on all of them at once.
While waiting for my train, found more of these. BTW, they point towards this website (
). Here you can put your name in katakana (no English accepted, sorry. ブレイクファロー is mine), then take a picture of yourself with your webcam (click the webcam button), then keep clicking the orange "Next"/"I accept" button until you get to a video. Then enjoy.
Ad on the train back home. Its business time.
After the last train into my home station for the night, these two guys were practicing their break dancing infront of the mirrored windows of one of the stores. Well, the one on the left was breakdancing (fairly well), but the guy in yellow was just watching himself shake his hips. While passers-by watched in awe and disgust.
Thanks Arianna, I shall treasure this symbol of all that I hate in Japan.
Thanks Lars for liberating the 1-litre graduated cylinder/pitcher from the izakaya. You so sneaky.
Just bought an electric violin
I mentioned my intentions a while back, and have been surreptitiously checking the used electric violin section of eBay for good deals. I found that all the violins were either like $50-100, and obviously pieces of shit made in China, or like $400+ (and in many cases $1500+) and therefore wayyy to expensive for me. I ended up on a happy medium, buying one for about $200, which is Korean-made (Korean=Quality, my friends. Believe you me), with a built-in preamp, and looks pretty sweet to boot. Turns out the guy that I bought it from was an English teacher a stone's throw away from here near Mt. Fuji (well, several stone's throws, I guess. About 40 klicks.) and just returned to the US 3 weeks ago. So now I have to pay like $70 shipping. Lame. Anyway, I always feel reassured that I'm not getting swindled when I deal with a real life person, and one who is smart enough to append a spam-flag to the end of the Gmail email address he uses for eBay registration. Good on you, Joshua.
I think I'm going to have to buy new strings for it, as apparently all e-violins come with sucky strings by default, but I've been to a good musical instruments store in a mall nearby, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I've only replaced violin strings a couple times though, so hopefully its not too different/difficult with this one.
I assume that I can get violin sheet music somewhere on the internet, else I'm going to have to resort to playing the few songs that the Suzuki-method managed to permanently instill in my brain like 10 years ago (Witch's Dance, Devil's Dream, Mississippi Reel, Gavotte in G-minor, Star Wars theme, etc). But either way, I'm pretty excited about getting it, as it'll be fantastic to have something constructive to do to while away the hours of confinement in this room when I'm too exhausted from work and/or generally too complacent to go out and do stuff.
An Apology to Socrates
I was watching House M.D. yesterday, and one of the interim solutions to the mysterious ailments experienced by the patient of the week (who was a swords and sorcerers playacting fanatic) was Hemlock poisoning. Sure, everyone knows about Hemlock – it was the sentence for one of the most famous trials of all time – but when House storms out of the apothecary shop with his brilliant Hemlock deduction, his team immediately responds with “Okay, I’ll check for piperidine alkaloids”.
“Piperidine alkaloids!” I exclaim, “I have some of those, and the MSDS didn’t mention anything about notorious neurotoxicity causing death of premodern philosophers! To Wikipedia, batman!”
So hemlock leaves (and roots) are chock full of a bunch of different piperidine alkaloids which are more or less all poisonous, their neurotoxicity stemming from being competitive agonists to the active site of certain nicotinic receptors, causing muscular paralysis, preventing breathing, and resulting in eventual death. Other molecules which do the same thing (to lesser and greater degrees, respectively) are nicotine and cobra poison.
For those interested in the structures of these badboys. Taken from some ancient ACS paper (Leete, E, “Biosynthesis of the hemlock and related piperidine alkaloids”, Accounts of Chemical Research 1971 4 (3), 100-107)
Well anyway, for reasons outside the scope of this post (and more importantly, inside several NDAs), I happen to have a supply of conveniently azide functionalized piperidine alkaloid (very similar structurally to coniine, which is the most active and poisonous of the chemicals contained in hemlock). So naturally, as I didn’t have anything better to do today, I decided to make the ultimate philosopher killing machine. It’s a piece of molecular art, really. I call it “Hypervalent Hemlock”.
Just in case it wasn't deadly enough already.
Yes, that’s a 3rd generation triazole dendrimer chock full of piperidine alkaloid goodness. I have no idea about the actual mechanism behind the binding of coniine to the nicotinic receptors, and so whether the right side of the molecule is sticking out here, but I like to think that this molecule can agonize a dozen receptors in one go, thereby increasing its Socrates killing power 12-fold.
Its not so pretty IRL, guys.
Science is awesome. Think I can make a work term report out of this?
Convenience stores here really bring a new meaning to the word.
Happy octopus bolognese is happy.
I just repaired the pocket of my sweater using a whittled chopstick as a needle. Its a good thing its a really course weave, else I'd have left a track of ruin instead of a slightly skewed seam. But hey, I'm totally self sufficient, guys!
o_O^
Blake Rolls
French bread, butter, a slice of Brie, a slab of Japanese market-fresh salmon sashimi topped with just enough wasabi to make it exciting.
I call them Blake Rolls, and they are the epitome of French-Japanese fusion cuisine.
I ate all my salmon before I decided I should take pictures, sorry guys. Next time I'll have lots of food-porn.
I'm really full of exceedingly expensive food. Time for dessert!
I call them Blake Rolls, and they are the epitome of French-Japanese fusion cuisine.
I ate all my salmon before I decided I should take pictures, sorry guys. Next time I'll have lots of food-porn.
I'm really full of exceedingly expensive food. Time for dessert!
THE WORLDS FAVORITE SWEETHEARTS POPEYE THE SAILORMAN 1929-1999
A few weeks ago I went to Ishigakijima with some NTTers (& Thom), and I never bothered to post any of the pics I have, nor any kind of oh-so-entertaining commentary that I know you - my adoring readers likely above average in attractiveness and intelligence - are so very fond of.
I really haven't the endurance or typing fortitude to include much more the subtitles of the photos below, as going into any amount of detail would require multiple volumes and at least two or three appendices, mostly filled with translations of monkey-related portmonteaus.
I began the trip by heading out to a capsule hotel in Tokyo near the bay, so I could head over to Haneda airport early, early the next morning. The capsule was maybe 6 feet long or so, making stretching more-or-less impossible (the diagonal was almost enough), but it had a built in radio and TV, and the bathing room in the basement had a bath full of rubber duckies. I kinda thought that sleeping in a coffin would be a bit claustrophobic or something, but it was actually okay. I'm not going to even mention the porno channel. Shit.
Craig on the Rodeo Boy near the bathroom in the Capsule hotel. Its presence confuses me.
You know you're in Okinawa when there are significantly more orchids in the airport then people. They were everywhere, they were beautiful. Other than that the airport was like most I've been in. Except the Starbucks was much harder to find than I expected.
This is at the A&W at the Okinawa Airport. Thom is enjoying his root beer in a mug, trying not to laugh maniacally at the guy in the background. His mullet didn't come out very well in this photo (hes adjusting it now, it looked much better afterwards). But seriously dude, what were you THINKING?
I didn't even notice Thom in the changing room when I took this. Hes trying on bathing suits at Okinawa airport to find one he likes. Jess is looking less than impressed with my choice of headwear.
You know you're in Ishigaki airport when there are more lion fish than people. Well, not really. But there wasn't very many people, and there were more lion fishes present than I'd ever seen before. I can't look at one of these fish without thinking of Livingston. (Picard's fish in his ready room)
When we got into the city we had to find a grocery store to stock up on edible supplies. This kumon center was right across the road. (FYI, we ended up getting mostly bread, canned tuna, bananas, snickers, canned fruit, and a mystery meat that I lovingly and delusionally called "bacon" for barbecuing)
Waiting at the bus station in Ishigaki city (we were there A LOT). Oliver was a big hit with the locals. Nice hat Lars.
First beach at Kabira. Its the only beach that we went to where there was a significant amount of other people. But we were just there for a bus-layover anyway, and no swimming was allowed. The water was pretty, but the weather hadn't cleared up too much yet.
This was either the beach near where we camped, or the beach at Kabira again. Pretty.
On the bus trying to find a place to camp. Its jungle out there. (I can't believe I caught a picture of myself in a roadside mirror. Crazy)
Okay this was Yonehara beach, supposed to be the best snorkelling on the island (I'd tend to agree, based on a statistically invalid sample size). The sand was kinda ouchy though, because of all the little coral pieces. But the place was absolutely deserted, just us.
Oww. Note to future-Blake. Coral wounds sting, watch yourself when going through coral underpasses. Also, tiny coral splinters in wounds inhibit the healing process.
More stunningly beautiful beaches. I think this was sunset beach. All those footprints are ours, it was completely flat and formless before our arrival. This may have had to do with the 2-3 "BEACH CLOSED" signs that we passes. But we bought off all the curious townsfolk with Snickers bars.
After my troubling sunburns of the first day, I tended to remain in the shade when not submerged in the water. Lucky there was this fantastic outcropping of awesomeness to hide under.
Me after Sunset beach. Waiting in the bus-stop place while artsy Oliver takes a well framed shot. I was very salty and sunburned by this point.
View from the peninsula on the northeast side of the island, at the very tip near the lighthouse. It was a fantastic view of the whole island. Thom looks pretty picturesque and thoughtful there. Shortly after he pulled out his iPhone and stood in the same place with his arm outstreached for 5 minutes trying to take photos of himself looking picturesque and thoughtful. We love you Thom.
View from the same spot, south towards the main hulk of the island.
There was something about that island out there that didn't look right. I had to get a better shot.
Every time I looked at this island it looked Photoshopped.
The shadows were ALL WRONG. You can always tell a Photoshop job by the water, its just impossible to get water right, ya know. But seriously folks, this thing was so perfect that my mind couldn't let it enter my reality.
We went to Taketomi island on the very last day before we had to catch our flight. It was only a 10 minute ferry ride away, and there was a festival going on (Miss Yaeyama beauty contest). The island was tiny and most was an old fashioned Ryukyu village flanked by scenic beaches.
This space was intentionally left blank.
Concert going on after the Miss Yaeyama thing. A man came up to me and tried to explain the purpose of the singing and the festival. I didn't get much from him, crazy islanders speak a language that is to Japanese as Beowulf is to modern English.
Yah he's tied up by his nose ring. Sad story.
End.
PDENG 55 Course Evaluation
Oh god, I can't believe its all over. It feels pretty good. I enjoyed writing my course evaluation, as this is the first time I've really put into words my thoughts on the program. I suppose that I should have done something for the formal investigation thing way back, but I was more in "suck it up and bear it" mode, as I knew no changes would really influence me. I've included my thoughts that I submitted with the course critique.
Course Content:
PDEng55 may be the most relevant and topical PDEng course of them all, and has most faithfully adhered to the PDEng tenant of not teaching, but evaluating preexisting skills. Despite this the assignments are tedious, rote and largely meaningless to a group of students (engineers in training) that are used to accomplishing, solving, or at least elucidating something during the completion of an assignment or course. PDEng offers nothing to take away for a student, only a check mark and knowledge of another tedious life experience finished. A way of improving this type of content escapes me, but I leave that in your very capable hands.
Course Experience:
My mentor (Ada Zacaj) marked very fairly, communicated well, answered emails promptly, and obviously was working to improve the PDEng experience. It is interesting and notable that in previous PDEng courses (15-45) I had passed (50%+) an assignment on the first submission only once or twice total (in failed cases of course I proceeded to do only the corrections suggested by the marker, resubmit, and pass), but during this course I received a Strong (100%) on each submission the first time. No significant changes have occurred in my writing skills or experience that would explain this radical change. It is also worth noting that other students under Zacaj also mentioned to me "easy marking", but students under other mentors still experienced the "hard marking" that we've seen before. This seemed to work out quite well for me, but perhaps was not fair to others?
Strengths:
The topics covered (distinctions between Canadian and international Engineering accreditation and professional organizations, globalization) are far more relevant than any covered in a previous PDEng course. The marking was so much easier than previous offerings of PDEng that it was almost laughable (and therefore much more enjoyable and less tedious for a student).
Improvements:
If any significant improvement on the course experience for students is to be had, a radical change in course content and philosophy must occur. I am not sure that even the PDEng Task Force is quite up to this challenge, as even a significant improvement towards "bearable" for students (and please make note of this: the course is currently completely unbearable for students, I think surveys must show this), would not do much to sway student opinion, which is very firmly entrenched (as evidenced by T-Shirts everywhere) in believing "PDEng Sucks".
I'm not one to say that there is never any hope, but PDEng has done much to alienate the student body and token "Task Forces" and "Course Evaluations" are too little too late for many of us. Thankfully the student population is highly transient, and after a few "generations", all memory of the painful experience of PDEng may be gone. If my experience with PDEng55 is evidence of a PDEng program improvement (and not just an improvement from 15 to 55), then significant steps have already been made. Please continue these steps and good luck.
Final Comments:
One of the few redeeming facts about PDEng is that it gets students writing... something. Technical writing, and more broadly being able to write intelligently about most anything is a very valuable skill, one that PDEng cultures to no end by requiring lengthy reports on topics as vague and soft as "globalization" (PDENG55) or "What animal best represents you and your coworkers?" (PDENG15). At least there has been some improvement based on those two examples. But officially PDEng does not exist to culture extemporaneous and flexible writing skills (read: BS), but rather to develop a series of vague and ill defined "professional skills". I think PDEng may work better if everyone acknowledged exactly what purposes it serves. A: to introduce students to rote, meaningless work that will become a (however small or large) part of any career, B: to look good on paper (for students and the university), and C: to allow students in their future careers to look at any tedious task, smile and say "At least its not PDEng!".
(N.B. This is not a joke, this purpose is justified and laudable, just better not cloaked in some "Professional Development" costume. Even a small amount of jest about this introduced into the course would make students feel a lot better about it.)
Course Content:
PDEng55 may be the most relevant and topical PDEng course of them all, and has most faithfully adhered to the PDEng tenant of not teaching, but evaluating preexisting skills. Despite this the assignments are tedious, rote and largely meaningless to a group of students (engineers in training) that are used to accomplishing, solving, or at least elucidating something during the completion of an assignment or course. PDEng offers nothing to take away for a student, only a check mark and knowledge of another tedious life experience finished. A way of improving this type of content escapes me, but I leave that in your very capable hands.
Course Experience:
My mentor (Ada Zacaj) marked very fairly, communicated well, answered emails promptly, and obviously was working to improve the PDEng experience. It is interesting and notable that in previous PDEng courses (15-45) I had passed (50%+) an assignment on the first submission only once or twice total (in failed cases of course I proceeded to do only the corrections suggested by the marker, resubmit, and pass), but during this course I received a Strong (100%) on each submission the first time. No significant changes have occurred in my writing skills or experience that would explain this radical change. It is also worth noting that other students under Zacaj also mentioned to me "easy marking", but students under other mentors still experienced the "hard marking" that we've seen before. This seemed to work out quite well for me, but perhaps was not fair to others?
Strengths:
The topics covered (distinctions between Canadian and international Engineering accreditation and professional organizations, globalization) are far more relevant than any covered in a previous PDEng course. The marking was so much easier than previous offerings of PDEng that it was almost laughable (and therefore much more enjoyable and less tedious for a student).
Improvements:
If any significant improvement on the course experience for students is to be had, a radical change in course content and philosophy must occur. I am not sure that even the PDEng Task Force is quite up to this challenge, as even a significant improvement towards "bearable" for students (and please make note of this: the course is currently completely unbearable for students, I think surveys must show this), would not do much to sway student opinion, which is very firmly entrenched (as evidenced by T-Shirts everywhere) in believing "PDEng Sucks".
I'm not one to say that there is never any hope, but PDEng has done much to alienate the student body and token "Task Forces" and "Course Evaluations" are too little too late for many of us. Thankfully the student population is highly transient, and after a few "generations", all memory of the painful experience of PDEng may be gone. If my experience with PDEng55 is evidence of a PDEng program improvement (and not just an improvement from 15 to 55), then significant steps have already been made. Please continue these steps and good luck.
Final Comments:
One of the few redeeming facts about PDEng is that it gets students writing... something. Technical writing, and more broadly being able to write intelligently about most anything is a very valuable skill, one that PDEng cultures to no end by requiring lengthy reports on topics as vague and soft as "globalization" (PDENG55) or "What animal best represents you and your coworkers?" (PDENG15). At least there has been some improvement based on those two examples. But officially PDEng does not exist to culture extemporaneous and flexible writing skills (read: BS), but rather to develop a series of vague and ill defined "professional skills". I think PDEng may work better if everyone acknowledged exactly what purposes it serves. A: to introduce students to rote, meaningless work that will become a (however small or large) part of any career, B: to look good on paper (for students and the university), and C: to allow students in their future careers to look at any tedious task, smile and say "At least its not PDEng!".
(N.B. This is not a joke, this purpose is justified and laudable, just better not cloaked in some "Professional Development" costume. Even a small amount of jest about this introduced into the course would make students feel a lot better about it.)
read pls?
can someone translate this please? I know it has something to do with an inspection of some kind on April 13th related to fire and/or disaster, but my kanji is still bad.
More Hatto Hiyari!
This month's hatto hiyari. Enjoy!
Care should ALWAYS be had when moving in wheeled chairs!
This is going to confuse a Japanese man somewhere. Its harmless enough that I consider it a test of whether these are being read.
I'm leaving, on a jet plane...
Hey so I haven't posted here in a little while.
Last weekend I climbed Takao-san (they use post-nominal honorifics here for mountains). It was pretty exciting and harrowing at times. I forgot my camera though (lame) but a friend of mine who is a much better photographer put a bunch up on flickr, which I will put up here when I get back.
Get back from where, you ask? I'm heading to Ishigaki-jima, an island in the Ryukyu archipelago south of Japan (way, way south, about as far south as you can go and still be in Japan). The latitude is about the same as the Bahamas, and so we're going there mostly for snorkeling, rainforesting, beaching, diving, etc. Should be a good time. Unfortunately we're camping, and the Ishigaki camping season doesn't start until April 1st (so we can't get a permit).
This doesn't seem to faze my intrepid fellow-adventurers, who are more than happy to skirt the law in order to full experience this tropical getaway.
Two quick things.
One, this place has coconut crabs. To quote Wikipedia: "The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper limit of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can become in today's atmosphere."
...
"Reports about the size of Birgus latro vary, but most references give a body length of up to 40 cm (16 in)[13], a weight of up to 4.1 kg (9.0 lb), and a leg span of more than 0.91 m (3.0 ft)[14], with males generally being larger than females. There have been reports in the literature of specimens measuring 6 feet (1.8 m) across the thorax and weighing 30 pounds (14 kg).[15][16] They can live more than 30 years [14]."
They also look like the guard the beaches of hell itself.
Here is a pretty picture of the beach near the place we'll be unlawfully camping:
pretty.
See you all on the flip side. I'm catching a flight out of Tokyo early, early tomorrow morning, so I'm staying in a capsule hotel tonight. I'm going full-on Japanese style accommodations for this trip.
Last weekend I climbed Takao-san (they use post-nominal honorifics here for mountains). It was pretty exciting and harrowing at times. I forgot my camera though (lame) but a friend of mine who is a much better photographer put a bunch up on flickr, which I will put up here when I get back.
Get back from where, you ask? I'm heading to Ishigaki-jima, an island in the Ryukyu archipelago south of Japan (way, way south, about as far south as you can go and still be in Japan). The latitude is about the same as the Bahamas, and so we're going there mostly for snorkeling, rainforesting, beaching, diving, etc. Should be a good time. Unfortunately we're camping, and the Ishigaki camping season doesn't start until April 1st (so we can't get a permit).
This doesn't seem to faze my intrepid fellow-adventurers, who are more than happy to skirt the law in order to full experience this tropical getaway.
Two quick things.
One, this place has coconut crabs. To quote Wikipedia: "The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper limit of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can become in today's atmosphere."
...
"Reports about the size of Birgus latro vary, but most references give a body length of up to 40 cm (16 in)[13], a weight of up to 4.1 kg (9.0 lb), and a leg span of more than 0.91 m (3.0 ft)[14], with males generally being larger than females. There have been reports in the literature of specimens measuring 6 feet (1.8 m) across the thorax and weighing 30 pounds (14 kg).[15][16] They can live more than 30 years [14]."
They also look like the guard the beaches of hell itself.
Here is a pretty picture of the beach near the place we'll be unlawfully camping:
pretty.
See you all on the flip side. I'm catching a flight out of Tokyo early, early tomorrow morning, so I'm staying in a capsule hotel tonight. I'm going full-on Japanese style accommodations for this trip.
Nihonglish
Nihonglish highlights that I certainly hope all my Japana-friends will adopt:
This evening, when it was waffling between freezing rain and melting snow, to my boss:
"Tenki fucking hidoi desu yo" (The weather is less than ideal, would you agree?)
Talking with one of my collaborators:
Oota-san: "Mitsubishi Kagaku wa iten o yoginaku saremasu. (Mitsubishi is forcing me to move [jobs]).
Me: No shit desu ne? (Is that so?)
My Japanese is doing pretty well, such that I can often understand quite a bit (if not most, if I know what to listen for) of what is said by my coworkers. But my speaking is still lagging behind, so I end up just responding in English. Its a good thing my coworkers are in just about the same position as me (except reversed), so our conversations work out better than expected. I intersperse some Nihongo into my speak just to make me not sound like a complete gaijin to passers-by.
Some Random Stuff
So I haven't posted here in a few days and I know that means that everyone's Buzz feed has been eerily empty. No one wants an empty Buzz feed, especially not Google. I feel as though I have to do my part to destroy Twitter and Facebook.
I pulled all these photos off of my iPhone. So I apologize for the ridiculously bad quality. Its a first generation one, and it has a case on it which has a very, very dirty little glass lens-protector that I have been meaning to remove for about 3 years, so theres a bit of a halo around everything. The photos are anywhere from a few weeks to a few hours old.
This is my favourite kitty from the Akihabara La La Neko Cafe that I went to wayyy back. He was by far the smallest, and almost troublingly thin, but he had a great regal look to him, so I had to take a picture.
Don't worry, thats the last cat cafe picture I'll post. I took about 300 while I was there, and I'm saving everyone's time by not posting them all with very predictable "Awww, KITTY!" captions.
This one is from the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. Theres not much to say about this, except that I was quite disappointed not to find any REAL mounties at the embassy. There was one guy guarding the door that ushered me in like royalty after I showed him my passport, but no mounted police to be seen, other than this cutout. I'm pretty sure thats a Wayne Gretzky doll or something on the left.
Ahh, the famous Saita-san, caught on film at last. This is us after the reception at the Embassy. I look like a monster! And hes wearing crazy heals on his dress shoes in this pic too.
Okay this is a really zoomed out shot, and the quality just isn't there to zoom in much, unfortunately. On the right is the Yokohama wharf, the longest in the world I believe. It looks like something that the USS Enterprise (the starship or the carrier) would dock at. This ship on the left is the newest of an experimental line of mega-catamarans, a couple of which are in service in the US Navy (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSV-1_Joint_Venture
). A Japanese ferry line just purchased a couple of them, and this is one of them. In true Japanese fashion, the port and starboard sides are covered in favourite A.A. Milne characters (Read: Winnie the Pooh). The ship is massive and looks like that stealth ship from a few James Bond's ago, except flamboyant, pink and covered with Piglet instead of mysterious, black and covered in stealth materials.
I'm really not a big fan of ships, but this one uses magnetohydrodynamic propulsion (known as a Caterpillar drive) that has no moving parts, but induces a current in sea water, and then uses a changing magnetic field to "push" the conductor (the sea water) away. So no moving parts, and this mother can go up to 60 knots (110+km/h).
So yesterday we (the normal crowd of NTTers and myself) went to the Kirin Beer Garden, according to a travel website the 8th most visited attraction in Yokohama (of 9, about 5 of which are hardly a 5 minute walk apart).
When we got in were were greeted by this cuneiform tablet. My brilliant understanding of Japanese was able to extract "Sumer", "Mesopotamia", "Beer" and "Welcome". From the information sign nearby, not the tablet, Katakana was not exactly the lingua franca in 3000 BCE Sumer. It seems as though Kirin (the oldest brewery in Japan) fancies that it can trace the roots of its recipes back to Mesopotamia (where beer was first invented).
And to Egypt (where beer was used to trick thousands of slaves into building pyramids - according to the brochure). The lobby with the ancient beer recipes also had a table for doing origami. If you could follow the instructions there and make a certain shape, you could trade it for an awesome "Blue Samurai" (kind of beer) bandanna. See Exhibit A.
Exhibit A.
The free tour came with some free beers at the end of it. This picture is noteworthy as Jessica is a staunch supporter of alcohol abstinence until marriage (did I get that right Jess? If not you're going to have to come out of lurk-mode and correct me). Don't worry, she didn't actually drink anything. Other than some revolting 0.00% quasi-Sprite-beer stuff. As you can tell from the picture, Arianna picked up the slack.