A few brief updates
Well, since I can't find anything about near future updates to the bigger iPod line, I just ordered a 20 GB one from the (Educational) Apple Store. Thirty dollars off, and I get to engrave "ingenio maximus, arte rudis" on the back for free. What isn't to want? I'm looking forward to applying a music playing 20 GB portable hard drive in obvious and non-obvious ways.
In other news, I need to find something non-physics to do this quarter. As best as I can tell, my options are clubs/classes in martial arts or dancing. The latter would be best, but I don't feel entirely comfortable going in entirely unexperienced and alone, so I think the former is in order. I'd keep up kendo, were it not for the 8:30 am Saturday practices being the main ones. My next thought is to maybe try fencing, but one of the practice nights there is Thursday and I have two homework assignments due Thursdays this term and one due Friday. This, I predict, will lead to very busy Thursday nights. While I may want to be using a sword then, it will undoubtably be a bad idea. Hmm... Any particular suggestions? Feel free to browse this database of orgs for me, if you're thusly intrepid.
Networks is going to be a really weird class. Two lectures in and we've mostly discussed methodologies of describing and collecting data on social networks. Tomorrow we're going to do the same with technological networks. Okay, there was an eensy weensy bit of math in there, proving that if you assume that people are friends with people randomly you see a Poisson distribution of the degree (number of connections) of nodes, which is entirely not what you see in reality (it's more like a power law with a beefed upl tail). I'm mostly curious as to what the makeup of the class is. Are a bunch of social science people taking it? Is it just us physics and complex systems students? Who knows. Maybe tomorrow I'll sit on the other side of the class, where all the people I don't know live. Proximity may not start conversations, but distance certainly limits them.
Ann Arbor, when strangely warm (46 degrees!) and foggy, is quite beautiful. Walking up to my house today, I could see the white-blue lights of the nearby bridge forming a parallel arc into the haze that obscured the bridge itself. In other news, the forecast for tomorrow calls for a high of 53 and a low of 18. In the words of swankier people than I, QtF?
There are snow piles built up at various places on campus that are as tall as I am. The thought that the ground under them will probably remain covered until April seems to always give me a slight grin.
In other news, I need to find something non-physics to do this quarter. As best as I can tell, my options are clubs/classes in martial arts or dancing. The latter would be best, but I don't feel entirely comfortable going in entirely unexperienced and alone, so I think the former is in order. I'd keep up kendo, were it not for the 8:30 am Saturday practices being the main ones. My next thought is to maybe try fencing, but one of the practice nights there is Thursday and I have two homework assignments due Thursdays this term and one due Friday. This, I predict, will lead to very busy Thursday nights. While I may want to be using a sword then, it will undoubtably be a bad idea. Hmm... Any particular suggestions? Feel free to browse this database of orgs for me, if you're thusly intrepid.
Networks is going to be a really weird class. Two lectures in and we've mostly discussed methodologies of describing and collecting data on social networks. Tomorrow we're going to do the same with technological networks. Okay, there was an eensy weensy bit of math in there, proving that if you assume that people are friends with people randomly you see a Poisson distribution of the degree (number of connections) of nodes, which is entirely not what you see in reality (it's more like a power law with a beefed upl tail). I'm mostly curious as to what the makeup of the class is. Are a bunch of social science people taking it? Is it just us physics and complex systems students? Who knows. Maybe tomorrow I'll sit on the other side of the class, where all the people I don't know live. Proximity may not start conversations, but distance certainly limits them.
Ann Arbor, when strangely warm (46 degrees!) and foggy, is quite beautiful. Walking up to my house today, I could see the white-blue lights of the nearby bridge forming a parallel arc into the haze that obscured the bridge itself. In other news, the forecast for tomorrow calls for a high of 53 and a low of 18. In the words of swankier people than I, QtF?
There are snow piles built up at various places on campus that are as tall as I am. The thought that the ground under them will probably remain covered until April seems to always give me a slight grin.