the counsel of friends
is a gift from God Most High
brings peace to my soul

Thermal Ponderings

I've heard it said that the human body loses a significant portion of its heat through the top of the head. Anyone know why this is? Does the brain generate more heat than the rest of the body, causing a greater thermal gradient resulting a a greater heat flow? Or are there convection currents in the body that carry thermal energy up through the head like a chimney? Does the skull have a greater coefficient of thermal conductivity than the rest of the body, allowing thermal energy to flow more readily out of the heat? Or maybe there's another reason that the biologists out there can share.

In any case, I'm glad I have my hat because its starting to get cold here.

Tim-

sighs of relief, the
candidacy is over
now bound for Japan

write of your travels
of the acoustics and fun
i'll call if its cheap

know that in all things
my prayers will be with you, and
that God will be too

«sigh»

Congratulations and God-speed.

Assignment

procrastination
is not the only answer
when homework is due

LIGO

Last weekend the Physics and Astronomy Club went on a field trip to Hanford, WA to see LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). I went on this trip last year also, but this year I drove instead of doing homework (no more contour integrals!). This year we did not get a chance to look at the equipment making up the interferometer, but we did get to see the control room and hear how the gravitational wave detection was going. There have been no signals yet, which is ok, since they don't expect to see any until their sensitivity improves. It was a good time and I was certainly not disappointed since the trip was worth it just for the Greek food we ate for lunch. Definitely a welcome distraction from studying for my E&M exam.

LIGO on Google Maps

Driving to LIGO

Greek food... Tasty!

x-arm of LIGO

Blue skies and tumbleweed(?)

∇ · E = 0

the Tempest has passed
with waves and radiation
but did i pass it?

is it over yet
or is this a lull before
the final death blow?

shall i survive it?
the integrals will tell all
what could not be found

the weekend comes soon
will i find my solace there
in the midst of friends?

Exams

exams always come
bringing stress and frustration
but never candy

udev Woes

In addition to school, frisbee golf and dealing with burglers, I've been helping with the latest release of Dropline GNOME for Slackware Linux. I'm responsible for building, testing and troubleshooting packages related to integrating digital camera support into GNOME. Usually my meager knowledge of the underpinnings of a Linux system is enough for me get it all working but this release cycle is different. Finally, after over a year of development Slackware 11 was released on last Monday. With it came some rather large changes to the system boot process and how hardware is managed with newer kernels. Specifically, if you decide to use a 2.6 kernel, linux-hotplug is disabled and device support must be handled entirely by udev. The problem is that with older versions of Slackware, linux-hotplug handled the creation and permissions of device nodes but since linux-hotplug will most likely be disabled (most of our users will be using a 2.6 kernel) I need to figure a way to get udev to create the proper nodes and more importantly, set the permissions on those nodes so that the appropriate users can access their camera. This involves deep understanding of the how Linux manages devices and how to write udev rules. In short, this problem is way over my head, especially while I'm in school and don't have an internet connection. There's some pretty smart guys on our development team, so I'm hoping they can figure it out. Hopefully it won't be too long before we get this and a few other bugs worked out and can release our final product. I"ll keep you posted...

"Shock¹"

(shǒk) noun. 1. A non-linear, high-amplitude disturbance in a material that typically induces conditions of high pressure and temperature. 2. The logical response to coming home and finding two girls watching TV in your apartment. 3. A famous musical drama in Japan. Syn: seismic disturbance, daze, stupor, concussion, trauma. Ant: settle, comfort.
{French choc, from choquer, to collide with, from Old French chuquier, perhaps of Germanic origin}