Author: Gary

There is nothing which hasn’t been done online. Nothing.

People have set up cameras so others can watch them eat, sleep, poop, and have sex.

I’d like to do something for all the voyeurs out there who like to live vicariously through my slice of the web. I’m going to let everyone see my homework.

I’m sorry if its not as racy as cyber defecation, but its the best your going to get from me.

Here is my last week’s homework assignment from my math class (I got a 49/50 on it. I got a point deducted for not stating x is not equal to y on question 2.13) and this weeks assignment (not yet graded). Some of the answers might not make sense if you can’t read the textbook.

Why am I doing this?
1) Shame is a powerful motivator. If I screw up royally, my failure will be public, which is all the more reason to not screw up.
2) Someone might learn something, or at least start up a discussion.
3) Its different.

I have a paper in my astronomy class I’ll post on Friday after I turn it in.

I re-ripped Akhnaten last night because I was missing Disk 2. I was listening to it most of the day on my ipod. It is by far my favorite Philip Glass opera (and my extension, my favorite opera….not that I’m familiar with that many to begin with)

A few months ago I signed up to Friendster. I have 11 ‘friends’ in Friendster which connects me to 82,987 people in the system with four degrees of separation. The problem with the system, is that the vast majority of those people aren’t connected through people, but through uber accounts like “First Avenue” or “Macalester” which aren’t people at all. When you start doing that, the whole system falls apart I’d think.

Friendster is a novelty more than anything else. The notion of using it as a dating service is sort of absurd. I guess in theory it makes more sense than your traditional net dating service, but I can’t see how you could meet someone via a chain with 2 intermediaries you don’t know.

If nothing else, Friendster is a very slow, blog lite directory. (I’d link to my profile, but as far as I can tell, I can’t link directly to it. The system is far more popular than it is capable of being)

One thing Friendster has taught me (other than the fact that I have few friends) is that I really don’t have a lot of “get to know Gary” type stuff on my site. No resume. No favorite foods or bands or things I like to do on lazy summer afternoons. I wouldn’t know what to write. I’m not a very introspective person. I like what I like, and I do what I like, but I don’t sit around and think about what I like and why. I don’t even know if I can put together a good resume. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have things to put on a resume, just that I don’t know how to straddle the line between self deprecation and self flattery.

Another thing I have learned from Friendster is that everyone else is a 20-something, trendy hipster who likes to go to live shows to watch obscure alternative rock bands. Everyone else also has unique piercings and tatoos in various locations on their body. I’m odd guy out I guess. They should have online social networks for know-it-all, dipshit, 30 year olds who listen to music that no one else enjoys. I’d be styling then.

One thing you might have gathered if you read this site, is that I’m not very political. That’s not to say I don’t have my views. I do, and I believe them strongly. I just don’t see the point in getting worked up about everything and letting an obsession of events I can’t control run my life. I don’t wear my politics out on my sleeve. I’m far more interested in talking about technology, school or business ventures because those are things I can use, influence, and effect me on a daily basis. Also, those things tend of have a much more lasting impact. Go back any length of time you want and read the papers from that period and you’ll find some political issue that is totally forgotten now that was being argued with passionate intensity by everyone alive at the time.

(That being said, I will announce now my plans to one day become the US Ambassador to The Bahamas. I’m going to give a ton of money to some Presidential campaign with the strings of getting appointed ambassador. I’ll actually become a minor expert in the subject of Bahamain/US relations so there is a legit reason as to why I should be the ambassador. After getting my sweet house in the Bahamas for a few years, I will retain the title of “Ambassador” for the rest of my life. I will then buy a boat and name it the Am-BASS-ador….get it? People will think its because I like bass fishing, but in reality, it will be because I learned how to play the bass. If the Bahamas are not available, I will gladly accept any other shittly little island in a tropical part of the world.) Corollary prediction: this post will get dredged up upon my appointment and cause a major scandal.

You may have noticed some changes to the site. They were significant enough to warrant a new version, but not so significant as to go up a full number. I fixed some broken stuff, changed the template, and some other minor things. I also made changes to the moblog and took a bunch of photos from the MIA. (I was sneaky this time so no one would catch me taking photos)

Bonus points to anyone other than Pete who can figure out the reference in the title of the post.

I finally broke down and got myself an ipod today. I got the 40gb model. 40gb is just ridiculous. I took it out to Barnes & Nobel tonight and it worked flawlessly. The DC car adaptor worked well too. I have some small gripes about it, but nothing major so far.

BTW, what do you call a bunch of middle aged men with laptops drinking coffee? Barnes & Nobel Eden Prarie on Sunday night.

One of things I’ve been doing with this diet is exploring different types of cheeses. I’ve come to really like Gruyere, a cheese from Switzerland. Its usually used in fondue, but I’ve had a hard and soft version and liked them both. I even tried some limburger…………my god was that awful. Jarlsberg, Emmental, Gouda, Edam, and Roquefort are all cheeses I’ve tried recently. I can’t say I’m too big of a fan of blue cheeses, but I have come to appreciate the sharper, harder, and aged cheeses.

I’ve also been eating more nuts, but there aren’t a whole lot of nuts out there to sample.

If you have the chance to have bison, do it. Its more expensive than beef so its not an everyday type of thing, but its well worth the experience. Bison burgers rock.

At B&N this evening I started reading Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers by Jan Gullberg. Imagine a single textbook you could use upto graduate study in Mathematics. That is this book….almost. It doens’t go too indepth into anything, but it covers everything. I bought it just to have as a reference.

I saw 50 First Dates last night. It was much better than I though it would be. I like how they didn’t pull the romantic comedy formula out and have a predictable ending.

I’m making my quarterly pilgramage to the Minneapolis Institute of Art today. Hopefull I’ll have some photos.

This week I’ll be handing in my first College 2.0 paper. Its on asteroid impacts with earth.

My astronomy course has a project that you have to do over the course of a semester which involves tracking where the moon is. You have to do 15 observations. On my second observation I got the moon right at its transit (it was on the meridian that extends due south through the zenith). The way you are to measure the moon is by the number of fists from the meridian it is at any observation. By catching it at the transit, I had a very simple zero fists. (a fist is literally your fist).

It didn’t take me long to realize that this was the way to go. The ‘fist’ seemed (and is) a very inexact measurement. A little bit of math, and you can figure out that the transit time of the moon advances 48.8 minutes per day. (360 (degrees in a circle) /29.5 (days in a lunar month) /15 (degrees in an hour) * 60 (minutes in an hour)) So, the entire observation project comes down to an exercie of making sure you observe at the right time (transit) and at the right conditions (clear). Even if my observation time isn’t perfect, its still a margin of error much less than trying to measure the angular distance with your fist (especially over many fists). Today it was roughly at transit at 8:00am, and yesterday roughly at 7:00am. Clearly, one of the two (if not both) can’t be exactly correct, but the moon was a meaure of 0, or a fraction of a fist from the meridian at the time. Its also hard to eyeball the perfect transit of the moon.

I for about the last two weeks we’ve had overcast skys most of the time, and that was when the transit was really late at night, so I didn’t miss anything, nor did I want to wake up just to look at the moon when its -15.

So tomorrow, the transit should be at about 9:00am, give or take 10 minutes.