RoboNaut Video

I got the opportunity to help with some power testing on NASA's new robot project. Here they put him through his check-out Tai Chi routine. They do a good job of anthropomorphizing him by having him look at his hands as he's checking out his fingers. By the way, he is technically anthropometric: When he stretches his arms out he's got the same wingspan as Yao Ming (Houston Rockets basketball player) and biceps proportional to Arnold Schwartzenegger in his prime.

I <3 my job.

New Ink! Now with Extra Geek

I hope that you'll all recognize those equations more-or-less instantly. If not, be educated here. As I put it to the artist last night: "These are probably the most complicated things I'll ever actually understand."

(That same artist pointed out the awesome symmetry of getting the equations that describe electromagnetism tattooed using a electromagnet, which drives the needle.)

Upon getting back to engineering and E&M specifically, I've remembered how much I loved that part of being a physicist. I'm very lucky that my engineering job also deals with those phenomena to some extent. I was reflecting the other day on how aesthetically beautiful these equations are, and a lot of E&M math tends to be that way. That's when my ideas for my next set of tattoos (which I'd been pondering for about three years) finally fell in to place.

So my plans for my upper back have finally crystalized, and I've started the process of getting my ideas for a more complete back panel into the form of actual art instead of just nebulous concepts. That part will take a little longer, but with any luck will be done by the end of the year.

BTW, in my web-surfing meanderings before getting this tattoo done, I tripped across a science tattoo emporium. Hours of entertainment, and the realization that I'm nowhere near the craziest geek out there followed. Also, relatively few people choose these equations for their tattoos. Much more popular is e^(i(pi)) + 1 = 0. Fair enough.

It's That Time Again!

Hard to believe that WorldCon is getting so close... only 2 weeks now! And my first vacation-from-work is even closer! Next Thursday I'll be flying to Maine to visit family before driving to Montreal. We'll be in Montreal from the Tuesday night before WorldCon to the Monday afternoon. Here's what my official schedule looks like so far:

When: Fri 17:00
Location: P-516AB
Title: Handicapping the Hugos II: The Short Fiction
Session ID: 590
Description: Our panellists survey the Hugo-nominated short stories,
novelettes, and novellas: they tell us what they want to win, what
will win, and why.

When: Fri 21:00
Location: P-518BC
Title: Mainstreaming the Geek Dream
Session ID: 37
Description: How did the internet change as it became mainstream? And
what is ahead now that we have increasing pressure on P2P networks,
national filtering and other restrictions?

When: Sat 9:00
Location: P-517D
Title: Fencing Demonstration
Session ID: 49
Description: A demonstration of the noble arts of modern and
Renaissance fencing. Try some moves for yourself. En garde!

When: Sat 14:00
Location: P-512AE
Title: Author Reading: The Bloggers
Session ID: 246

When: Sat 15:30
Location: P-518A
Title: A Fine Line
Session ID: 621
Description: "Publishers have got to live, like anyone else, and you
cannot blame them for advertising their wares, but the truly shameful
feature of literary life before the war was the blurring of the
distinction between advertising and criticism. [Reviewers] churned
forth their praise: 'masterpiece', 'brilliant', 'unforgettable' and so
forth - like so many mechanical pianos." (George Orwell) Is this still
true (if it ever was)?

When: Sun 15:30
Location: P-514AB
Title: Question Time with David Hartwell
Session ID: 154
All Participants: David Hartwell, Karen Burnham
Description: You are invited to submit questions beforehand to the
box held at the Kaffeeklatsch sign up table.

When: Mon 14:00
Location: P-522B
Title: Mundane SF vs Science
Session ID: 102
Description: Mundane SF aims to extrapolate from the science of
today. But science doesn’t work like that. What’s happened to the
paradigm shift?


A reading for bloggers? Any suggestions of anything I've written here that you'd be thrilled to hear read aloud...? Yeah, didn't think so. Still, it could be fun for my fellow readers and the three confused people in the audience.

Anyway, if you don't see me elsewhere, I'll be spending lots of time behind the Locus table, freeing up some of the staff members to go out and do interviews and journalism... more important than ever this year. So drop by and visit! And if you see me walking around the con, feel free to say hi! I should be relatively easily recognizable by the magical skin markings:

Prosaic: Weather and Travel

So, when we moved here, we asked about snow. And they said, "Oh it snowed once like, thirty years ago. It doesn't snow in Houston!"

We beg to differ.

And as you'll see from the daylight picture, some of it is still around this morning!

Of course, when we moved here last year they also said "Houston never really takes direct hits from hurricanes!" So in retrospect, we should have been buying snowshoes.


I'd say we were lured here under false pretenses except for one thing. Everyone also said, "You'll love it here except for the weather!" And we do.

In other news, I'm leaving on some hastily arranged travel today. My father's in the hospital in central Arizona, so I'm heading up to help out. It doesn't look life-threatening so far; his pacemaker went off a few times and upon further examination they found some blood-clots hanging out where they oughtn't. Still, I'm glad to go up and cheer folks up and help around the house as needed. I should be back in Houston on Tuesday, preparatory to my final exam on Thursday night. While I'm there I'll be away from high-speed internet connections, so I'll be less responsive to email and comments than usual.

Ike Photos up at Flickr

I've posted some photos up at Flickr. A couple are from our "enforced vacation" in San Antonio. Others show remaining damage on the University of Houston campus (11 days post-storm), the rest (see photo to the left here) show some remaining damage in our neighborhood (12 days post-storm). Things are totally back to normal for us; Curtis went back to work on Monday. However, riding home on Tuesday night I counted at least 7 areas along the I-45 in Houston without power. I know that my Digital Signal Processing professor didn't have his power back on Tuesday. Hurricanes pack one hell of a wallop!