Category: General

A while ago I made a post about how I wanted to want a Mac. Unbeknownst to me, that post got linked on some Mac news site and within minutes of posting I got clobbered by Mac zealots because I didn’t full out want a Mac and pointed out what I think are some weaknesses of it.

Like many people my age, my first computer was an Apple IIc. I purchased it for about $600 at American electronics (Crazy TV Lenny) in Appleton, WI. I had the box of 5 1/4″ floppy discs I’d carry around at school and pirated all sorts of software for it. The Apple IIc and my dot matrix printer served me well through college. When I graduated, I purchased a Mac LC (the pizza box ones) and got a modem and an account to CompuServe. This also served me well.

When I moved up to the Twin Cities, I saw that the action was in the PC world. You could make money programming for Windows 3.11, so I sold my Mac and purchased a 486. There was a lot of action going on at this time. The first Pentiums were coming out. Windows 95 was in beta (Chicago). People were starting to use NT as a server platform.

Microsoft was actually doing stuff. They were coming out with lots of new applications, doing new things. I don’t regret moving to Windows. Hell, I had a company which was solidly Microsoft centric. I was a big Microsoft fan.

Once I got out of the consulting biz, I ran Stomped and we had a website that hosted stuff with a lot of traffic. I didn’t do anything with the servers. The guys that ran it were really knowledgeable UNIX admins and we used FreeBSD for our servers. It was pretty eye opening. There was no way that NT could support that sort of load on the same equipment. In fact, in the sever room where our stuff was located, there was another very high profile website that had a farm of NT servers. We had one rack (half really). They had an entire row of machines. The cost of our setup was a fraction of theirs, but we could probably handle a load big without much difficulty. (our servers were much cheaper too).

Microsoft has done nothing of note in the last 5 years. Maybe .NET. But even then, php is becoming a much more universal medium for doing web application development than .NET. Microsoft has jumped the shark. Does anyone really want or need Vista?

This by itself doesn’t mean anything for a person who wants to buy a personal computer. The fortunes of a company don’t really matter in your day to day computer use. If you read the post I made back in March, I list the things which are holding me back from buying a Mac. I think I am near the point where I no longer want to want a Mac, but actually want a Mac. There are several things which have brought about this switch:

• Software doesn’t matter that much anymore. The vast majority of things I do on my computer are done on a browser, and it really doesn’t matter what the OS is.
• What software I do use is for the most part available on Mac or there is an equivalent. In particular: World of Warcraft, Trillian, iTunes (duh), Thunderbird, Firefox, Open Office.
• There are other applications on Mac that I haven’t used, but may be more willing to try if I had a Mac. In particular video editing.
• Maybe its bandwagon jumping, but there is buzz with Apple right now. I’m not sure how that factors into my decision calculus, but it’s in there somewhere. I was actually interested in watching Steve Jobs keynote from Macworld. I could care less about the Bill Gates rehashed vision of the computing future.
• Intel based computers. This is big. Even if they don’t support it out of the box, I can’t help but think that a week after they’re on the street, someone will come up with a way to dual boot Windows (or Linux). If I absolutely need to run Windows, I could.

So as of this minute, I’d say the dual core MacBooks are the leader in the “what computer am I going to take around the world” competition. I’ll wait for them to actually come out and try to get more information, but if I had to pull the trigger and order a laptop now, that would be my pick.

The issue of menu bars being on the top of each window is still sort of a sticking point, but I guess I could learn to live with it.

I’m writing this particular post for several reasons. The first is to try to show people what I’m doing in my current research project at the IRM. The second is that by providing a detailed explaination to other people of what I’m doing, it helps organize my thoughts. Finally, it also provides a documentation of what I’m doing that I will be able to go back and refer to later on. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments.

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In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite. – Paul Dirac

Like most undergraduate research projects, this didn’t begin of my own volition. I recieved an email asking if any undergrads wanted to do research with Subir Banerjee. I had my introductory geology course with Subir and was looking for a chance to do some research, so I jumped at it. This was in the spring of 2005.

Outside of some introductory geology courses, I knew nothing about geomagnetism. No undergrads really know anything about it, so I wasn’t too worried. (an interesting aside, one of my former debaters and employees, Shane Colin, used to work here on their computer systems. I used to give him crap all the time about what the hell rock magnetism was. Well, look who’s getting the last laugh)

The project was to begin in the summer, but as I was going to be unable to do anything for seven weeks during the summer due to field camp, I had to start the project in August when I got back. Come August, I was sort of thrown to the wolves. The IRM staff was pretty helpful, but I had to learn a lot of it on my own. I was given a copy of Environmental Magnetism by Evans and Heller, the Hitchhikers Guide to Magnetism, and told to ask if I had any questions. It wasn’t as bad as I make it sound, but the impetus for learning was definately on my shoulders…and still is.

The reason why I’m doing a project in the first place is so I can graduate with Latin Honors and so I can also get honest to goodness science guy type research experience before I enter grad school. My grades were good enough at the start of the Fall semester that I was on track to graduate Summa Cum Laude, but with the disaster which was November and my inner ear thing, I may have to settle for a lower rank. Either way, I still have to do a project.

In spring of 2005 I was asked by Subir if I was interested in going to Argentina. It took all of 2 seconds to say “yes”. In Argentina, we collected samples of paleosol, loess, and topsoil from the area outside of Cordoba.

Each sample represented 5cm of “dirt” (paelosol, loess, soil) for about 20m. We ended up with an entire profile going down the entire 20m. We had about 100kg of samples to bring back in total. All the samples were brought back in small plastic bags in large nylon gym bags. We looked like drug runners.

The photo below shows how we took our samples. The sample area was a ravine during the wet season, so we could get access to the soil column going down pretty far. We would carve out a section several cm horizontally to remove any soil which may have been exposed to the air and oxidized. We used either a garden spade or a cut out brass pipe to dig the soil our in bands going up the column. You could tell if you were in a section of loess or paleosol by how hard it was. It was very easy to dig out loess, paleosol was very hard.

I traveled to Argentina with Dr. Ramon Egli, who is from Switzerland. In a burst of American machismo, I’d use my American berzerkerfury skill in digging out dirt which earned me the nickname “SuperGary” from our Argentinean collegues. I explained my skill by paraphrasing The Third Man: “Americans put a man on the moon while the Swiss can only build cookoo clocks and watches” 🙂

The purpose of the Argentina trip was not for my research project. We collected far more than I will be using for my project. Arriving back in the US, I still had to come up with a worthy area of research. Its hard to do independent of an advisor, because unless your familiar with the literature, its hard to know exactly what needs researching.Subir pointed out that there is a well documented correlation between precipitation levels and Magnetic susceptibility in soil. What is not understood is why. It could be due to bacteria in the soil which creates magnatite, or it could be due to inorganic processes. That’s the elevator pitch version of what I’m trying to do.

I was supposed to begin working on the Argentina samples during the Fall semester, but due to the oft mentioned inner ear thing, I wasn’t able to do anything. This week I finally began work on the soil samples. Currently I’m preparing samples so they can be used by the equipment in the lab. This means taking the soil and packing it into 1 cubic cm plastic cubes. I will also be packing soil into gelcaps and packing the gelcaps into drinking straws later on. This is the unglamorous part of science they never tell you about when your watching the Science channel.

Here is the prep area where I have to get the samples ready. The computer is connected to the database where all the data on each sample is collected. The glass box thing is a digital scale which is connected to the computer to put the weight of each sample directly into the database.

This is one of the samples collected in Argentina. The dirt is pretty chunky and needs to be crushed so it packs easier.

Here I’ve taken the sample and crushed it up with a hunk of brass. I use a seperate piece of paper for each sample so I don’t contaminate any sample with material from a previous one.

Here is a finished sample. Weighed, taped up, labeled, and put into the database.

Here is the collection of all the samples I had done as of Wednesday. I’ll prepare about a dozen more and start running some tests on Friday.

I will have more photos over the next few weeks as I progress further on the project.

I’ve written several aborted posts in the weeks since I’ve last posted here. I think its time to get back into the swing of things.

• I saw Munich, Fun with Dick and Jane, and Cassanova over the weekend. Munich was probably one of, if not the best, films of 2005. Cassanova was nice if you came in with no expectations. Dick and Jane was stupid. What has Jim Carey done lately? I wonder if it is a coincidence that the stars of Brokeback Mountain (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) both came out with movies where they played very masculine characters (Jarhead and Cassanova) at the same time as Brokeback Mountain?

• One of the things which years of speech and debate did for me was get me to read The Economist. Their end of the year double issue is always their best. They have excellent articles this year on: Microstates, Wheat, Darwinsim as a Philosophy, Differeing notions of poverty, and the future of conspicuous consumption. The Economist (wisely) is doing a Salon.com type system where you can get a free day pass to the site by viewing an ad. (as an aside, the ad you view is for EDS and the music they play is from Philip Glass)

• The next few weeks I’ll be working on my research project at the Institute for Rock Magnetism. I got funding approved for my Undergraduate Research Opportunity Project (UROP) which is titled Paleo-rainfall and its Magnetic Proxy from Soils: The Microbial Link. Geomagnetism is a pretty obscure field, and the guys that work at the IRM really know their shit. Its rather overwhelming at times. I was introduced to this field in August, and while I’ve come a long way, I know enough to know how much I don’t know….which is a lot. In World of Warcraft terms, I’m about level 10 and they’re level 60 with epic gear.

• I’ve upgraded the software for this site to WordPress 2.0. You probably can’t notice a difference, but the back end is much cleaner. I don’t think I’ve gotten a single comment spam since I installed the Akismet spam filter. All of my WordPress 1.5 plug-ins and Themes seem to still work.

• Congratulations are in order to Mrs. Amy Thomas Moore who got married on Saturday in somewhere in the panhandle, Texas. The wedding was acapella.

• Props also go out to Sean who got a perfect score on his LSAT. He is I think the 3rd person who was on the debate team with me at Mac who got a perfect LSAT score. I think I might be the only person who was on the debate team at Mac at that time who doesn’t have an advanced degree.

• My trip is still on. More details to come. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of how/where/what I’ll be doing. I’m going to try to plan out the first leg of the trip which will be island hopping in the Pacific.

My sense of balance is pretty much back to normal now. I can notice some effects when driving and I turn my head to view traffic, but that is about it. I also get some dizzyness brushing my teeth. I’d say on a scale of 1 to 10 I’m at about a 2 now. I really hope this never comes back.

I’ll be back on campus tomorrow.

I have no idea what is going to happen to my semester. Finals are only a few weeks away and I’ve pretty much shot myself in the ass missing two weeks of school. I haven’t gotten less than an A- in any classroom course and if this semester gets hosed then I’m seriously going to have to reconsider continuning with academia. What sucks is that its not as if I don’t get what is happening in class. I conceptually understand pretty much everything, its all a matter of doing the busy work and jumping through the hoops. I do believe I have hit a point where I have a strong enough background in math and science to learn most things on my own, from journal articles and/or textbooks.

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time academically.

Other things:

• Please vote for Chris “Christmas” Rodriguez.
• Koyaanisqatsi
• 43Things.com is a neat site. Bietz pointed out that its owned by Amazon so they might be tracking stuff, but I really don’t care.
• Nated asked for people to fill out a survey for one of his MBA classes. It doesn’t collect anything personal and its quick.

Also, I’ve changed my AIM and MSN account names. You can’t reach me via my old IM addresses anymore. Contact me if you want my new IM. (I also have accounts for Yahoo, ICQ, and Google. Trillian is nice)

MIT has recently had a bit to do about their $100 laptop, which was designed to be a cheap computer for people in 3rd World Countries. From their FAQ page:

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. This rugged laptop will be WiFi-enabled and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.

This I think is a good thing. In fact, I know I’m not alone in saying that I’d want to have one of these. I know lots of college students that would like one of these. $100 is the cost of the parts and does not assume a $100 street price for consumers.

When they first announced the project, they said they were not going to offer the laptop to the public, which I thought was really dumb. In the press conference I’m watching while I write this, Nicholas Negroponte and with Kofi Annan (Macalester 61′), said that they would offer the laptop to commercial companies so the public can buy it, most probably for more than $100 (maybe $150-200). This is smart.

To make this gadget successful they need to do two things: 1) they need to create a large base of applications that are easy to use and designed for this product, and easy to translate. 2) They need to keep pushing the costs for the components down and the only way you can do that is through volume. Letting users in developed nations pay for that volume is a win-win. They will also be able to create a slew of applications and addons that will be able to be used by users in 3rd World Countries.

I got 2 iOpeners when they came out off of eBay. I’d easily get one of these for similar reasons. You could buy 3 of these for the cost of an xBox. Many of the PSP hacks that are floating around could much more easily be adopted for a tool like this.

Assuming this works, its cool. I don’t think that they are going to solve all the worlds problems with this. There is way too much opportunity for corruption. I could easily see these selling for $50 on eBay when people steal them wholesale and try to resell them. The idea of everyone in the world having a laptop is compelling, but I think there are far too many political roadblocks to this being a huge success.