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I'll be switching my primary browser mail with physicsforums/Windows Live service to Google Mail. The major reason being the major glitches with Windows Live while using Firefox (it doesn't fetch the previous message when replying/forwarding - mysteriously, it always works with IE), slow loading times, inconveniences (drafting, attaching, searching etc. feel just that slightly better with Google).

[Edit: Wonder why I wrote 'major' twice in a sentence like that.. Oh well.]

Can't think of a nice email address to complete ...@ephedyn.com for now.

As I'm writing a philosophy lecture now, I feel like sharing a very important principle. One of the precepts that I've always adhered to is to present an argument that you must accept to be true, and not one which you are convinced to be true. I don't see what's the point of a lecture where I expect the audience to take what I say to be true simply because I'm the lecturer - a few half-truths may evade scrutiny, and I might as well talk about the Pachinko (パチンコ) aliens' conspiracy to conquer the world, because that carries just as much clout. Instead, I like to present things from the position of someone who's only just as qualified as anyone else in the audience, but weave my presentation like an argument structure.

This is especially the case in law or ethics, where the ideal sentence is one which we must accept, whether or not we sympathize with one party. I feel that the same goes with competitions where we feel like the judging was unfair (I did feel unfairly judged at a science fair, but I believe that it's my fault that I didn't rob him of any chance to be unfair towards me.)

Van Cilburn was one excellent example. Younger people like me might not know about him, hence for their benefit, let me quote the Wikipedia article on him:

Where I discuss solutions to racism

I just happened to watch this video... And my first impression was... this looks so racist *lol*. (1/4 of MIT's population is Asian by the way... how this compares to the video is your cue.)

As philosophers, we only make unhappy discoveries

Mmm doing work for the military has immediately given me inspiration for my next article. (hint: title) My favourite being "I'm looking for an honest man." (Diogenes) On the other hand, I think that we make mischievous discoveries in physics, especially in quantum mechanics (e.g. uncertainty principle, the cat...), although some of these are improperly applied. :3

Soursop juice

Went for soursop juice today. It's my newfound love. And the pulp is nice. Only problem is, the seeds are embedded in the pulp. I thought, okay... I know it's grown that way so that animals will swallow the seeds into their digestive system, and then disperse them away from the parent plant. Too bad to meet an educated animal. So I'd try and err with a mix of chewing and sucking action to avoid swallowing the seeds. Then I accidentally swallowed a seed. (I did say, err.)

It's kind of funny how conscious we are of the evolutionary schemes but still fall prey to them. And no, I'm not only referring to swallowing seeds by accident.

Wire transfer

Eric: "How do you transfer money overseas, to someone's bank account?"

Me: "Wire transfer. In other words, throw your money into the sea."

I don't have a logical explanation, but some things just smell like scams from light years away.

Remembering the November heat

Overpriced bicycle parts
Me: "3g seat clamp for 99 euros? That's like... 33000 euros per kg!"
Eric: "Bernhard is smart to go into the carbon business. No one else can make..."

[A few days later.]

Eric (quoting): "He only has a 30.0mm size. But 60 euros: 'i have seat clamb with 30,0mm in stock that will work price is 60 €'"
Me: "Why is it more expensive now? Tell him 'Don't € around with me... I will € him!'"

[A day later.]

Me: "I can use the university workshop to make lots of things..."
Eric: "Good, next time I send things to you and you make for me."
Me: "Sure, no problem. But I will charge money..."
Eric: "Wtf?"

Me: "Don't worry, my pricing scheme is very easy to understand. Frame, seatpost, whatever... doesn't matter what it is - 33000 euros per kg."


For dummies
Me: "They should write a book to add on to the 'for Dummies' series."
Shun: "On?"
Me: "Quantum Field Theory for Dummies"
Shun: "...not many people would read."

[A few minutes later...]

Me (quoting a source): "'I think it would be a good idea to spec up also on advanced integration techniques, including distributions and functionals.' You see? That's more like what I'm talking about! IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO SPEC UP ON ADVANCED INTEGRATION TECHNIQUES. SOUNDS MORE LIKE A RPG NOW."

What would be one's last?

My mother saw a beautiful car while she was in Australia, and obviously thought, "Wow, what a beautiful car," and decided to take a better look.

Then she realized that it was a hearse, and was quite surprised.

Someone wasn't so surprised... "Of course, it's one's last ride."

You see, I've had very close encounters with death, cancer etc. I had severe sepsis, at a WBC count that would generally have implied bone marrow failure. So I'm supposed to be one of those... 'near-death-enlightened' people, and I often get questions along those lines. A classmate asked me before, what's death like? What would I want to do before I die? I wrote back with only 2 things:

1. "...listen to a friend play the piano."
2. "Wash the hair of someone who's very busy all the time."

I bet my classmate was very disappointed with my answers.

Keeping a long fringe

Some people ask me why I have a very long fringe, which often covers my eyes. It gets in the way when I'm using a power tool, of course - rather dangerously.

The truth is, I only keep a long fringe when I'm in a period of heightened intellectual activity (nearing chess competitions, math competitions, important tests etc.) Because sometimes I think that I have eyes, but I do not see.



Nobuyuki Tsujii's interpretation of La Campanella is the best I've heard, in my opinion. He may be blind, but I'm sure that he sees more clearly than most of us.

It's not over 9000... at least.

It's kind of demoralizing these days =/ I can't find the inspiration to write, and there's so much to do... Kihara's article on electromagnets, read-up on MOSFET amplifiers, radiation calculations, interview, serious emails to write. What's really demoralizing is that I'm witnessing a horrible ethical climate all this while and I can't stop thinking about it...

What do you have?

I thought about it, and I figured: I started with all that I had. I'm left with what I have to give. It's not much, but it's everything that I have.

If we start with a tabula rasa state of mind, then perhaps we should remember that the inscriptions erode the material that remains on the blank slate. IMO, we start from zero, and go into negatives. It's up to you to figure out what you want to write with the remaining space. But I've come across my fair share of people who'd rather pursue their personal (I can't say 'gain', since it's 'negative', as I was saying) with what's left.

Dealing with failure?

I've been pondering over the "significant failure" essay and I realized that there are tens of thousands of people who would be writing the same thing, and all of them will have something to write. We ARE really in good company if we fail.

The easy part about the essay is that the first half is already written for you - what had I chosen to write for the second half?

P.S.: Oh, and I broke a promise, or rather, went against something I said. I swore upon a self-incurred penalty of 1000 solutions to differential equations... so, in the matter of 5 minutes, I ended up having 9000 differential equations to solve as punishment... I guess I'll pick up a book with examples on electricity and magnetism and begin atoning my sin.

All life is problem solving?

Yesterday, Eric informed me that my Powercordz had arrived.

Now, I just received a call. My blood sample returned from the lab. I can't wait to strike off the whole licensing issue from my to-do list!

Image irrelevant.

These past few days, I've reflected on my project. Eric pointed out major flaws with my drawings:

1. shading of the lids on the section views
2. missing top views for vacuum chamber wall and both lids
3. inlet port bores on the vacuum chamber wall should be indicated by hyphenated lines
4. bores should be demonstrated on a side view
5. O-ring diameter should be indicated, because it seems like the O-ring is bound vertically
6. the lids and chamber sections should be well indicated, because at any time, it gets confusing which is the hollow part to the person interpreting the drawing

I really owe him one - he has no obligation to help me out, and it can be very boring to help someone with this type of things.

My original source of quotations turned down the machining job because the dimensions of the vacuum wall were too big for their machine. The glass fabricator turned down the job too: fortunately, perhaps because I'm starting to think that a ceramic base plate is safer, because the filament heats up to >1080 degrees Celsius - where Pyrex could shatter. I did reduce the size of the chamber because I knew this would happen, but I guess it wasn't enough. I could reduce it further if I could saturate a magnetic field beyond 1.4T, but it's even more challenging to do that.

Then I remember how Fernando has been pouring >20 hours of work into this, for no credit at all, despite his filled weeks.

And I thought, I'm really glad for this year because it has taught me that you could have friends(?) who are very close to you, circumstantially, proximity-wise... but you never know how those who bail you out in times of need could be people whom you barely know in person. That includes Eric, who has never met me in person and could mail me an AX-Lightness seatpost (298,00 €) before I even paid him.

My mother told me the stories of how she needed guarantors for my brother and sister's university loans. She approached, in person, her 30-plus-years-long friends dating from her school days, but all of them turned her down. One by one, they came up with excuses not to sign those documents. They didn't want to be financially liable, although there was nothing to suggest that my siblings would default payment of their loans.

Desperate, she sent a short message to a person that she had only known through work - and for 2 years at that - and the person immediately replied, "Yes," to her request.

When I started this year, I thought that all life is problem solving. But I learned from this project that life is not merely encountering apertures and bending past them, but also responding to phase changes; finding other waves of resonating frequency; constructive interference with these waves, by which at the end of the day, you'll see beautiful diffraction patterns.

Not all life is problem solving.

At a promontory

Spent 3 hours writing a... 671 word essay. Now I have to cut it down to 250. On a side note, I accidentally opened an "opencirca.doc" and read a short novel which I wrote in late-2007. It began with:

"The [trouble] of man is not often the disparity by which [may remain] unfazed, but bridging the chasm that thus makes for this disparity."

I don't really understand what I had meant. But I interpret it as, the biggest difficulty problem is not a set of differences - in fact some may remain undaunted by the sheer contrast - but resolving these differences. Differences between what you want and where you are at. That's particularly true at this moment.

Sadly, it's not just a matter of 421 words, but 9400 miles.

Tired!

I sorted through the notes on my table and isolated those related to research. I reinforced the punch holes with clear plastic ring stickers - a task which usually isn't exhausting - but I found that I had a lot of sheets to reinforce! It's been a long journey. Left with the A3 technical drawings which I don't know how I should secure onto my A4 ring binder. Will figure a way.

I heard the phrase "morale booster" quite a few times today. People were taking a mock test as a "morale booster" for the coming examinations. I don't understand their lingo, though. Maybe because they are busy studying for examinations, while I wish I had the time to study for my examinations (I have 2 more tests than any of them, and they begin earlier than any of theirs; and my final examinations end later than anyone because I have the UCLES Physics paper.) But I'm not proceeding blindly - rather than that, I don't believe in "morale boosters". Let me use an anecdote, adapted from a text message that I sent to a friend.

Geylang; and more particle accelerator.

It's quite thick :( (see story below)

Had no inspiration (and no sleep) for the project lately, then Fernando called up at 1.20am to ask me out for a cycling trip. Took the opportunity to find some inspiration. I couldn't suggest a destination though, but he decided to come down first anyway. I went back to my work and forgot all about the destination problem until he called up again (felt like only a minute later), saying that he was already downstairs... Great, so we rode randomly for half an hour, before seeing the time, I casually suggested Geylang, which would be an interesting social experiment. Big mistake, because I couldn't change Fernando's mind after that. -_- I have a funding proposal to write!

So... we were at Geylang in the morning. An amazing number of cabs were slowing navigating those streets for such an hour; the drivers probably doing some shopping.