A Lazy Sunday

Not much going on here. Did I mention that my new desk is awesome? Check it out: bitchin' desk!

Ikea Rocks

I bought a fantastic desk at ikea today. It cost me $50 and it is bitchin'! Maybe I'll take some pictures of it and post them online soon. It's basically a table, 55"x29"x30", but that's exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, I had to wake up at 8am this morning to drive an hour and forty minutes to get to the Ikea in Tempe. I had to wake up so early because I wanted to get back to Tucson in time to help pump DesertStar in the lab. Sadly, I took too long at Ikea and didn't get back until 1:30pm. So I didn't have any time in the lab to do stuff before heading off to play softball at 2pm with the usual gang. But it should be ok. There will be another opportunity to do stuff in the lab tomorrow.

And then, Brandon Swift, a Berkeley undergrad who's also a prospective grad student, will arrive in Tucson tomorrow night. It should be fun hanging out with him again.

Tweaking

Going into graduate school, I didn't have much of a background in instrumentation. I knew very little about what was involved in the process of building an instrument designed to be used for scientific purposes. However, when I was an undergrad, I did data analysis in a lab where other people built instruments, so I was exposed to that sort of work back then and I became comfortable in that sort of an environment. But I think more important than that is my desire to use things that are set up the way I want them to be. When you build an instrument, you build it exactly the way you want it to be built, so that it will do exactly what you want it to do (within time/budget constraints). That's the way I think things should be done. To give you an example, last night I spent about 3 hours tweaking various stuff on my laptop to set up mouse gestures. I have also spent a lot of time in the past on this, but it wasn't until last night that I finally had it set up correctly. So now, when I'm running FVWM --a highly configurable window manager -- on Fedora Core 3 on my laptop, I can drag the mouse downwards while holding the right button to start a terminal without ever looking at a menu. I haven't defined any new gestures yet, but I certainly will in the near future. While we're on the subject of mouse gestures, you can download an extension for Firefox that will allow you to use mouse gestures with Firefox (regardless of your operating system).

Coach Bussmann (Junior)

I have an extremely difficult time coaching. That's it. That's all. Oh wait, you want to know why? Well, let's see if I can express it (as you'll see, that's part of the problem for me).

I love helping people understand how to get better and then watching them do it. I really really do. What I don't love is telling people what to do (which seems to be an indelible part of teaching). And then, invariably, my advice seems to have made no impact whatsoever. Either a) I gave too much information -- nothing sunk in (let's call this the "fire hose" problem OR b) they weren't paying attention OR c) there was improvement and I just missed it. Well, it's hard for me to believe it's (c). For example, today at softball I tried to get people who were playing infield to creep towards home plate as the hitter makes contact with the ball. The idea is that, by creeping forward, you are in a more aggressive stance and better prepared to receive the ball when it comes your way. I thought I communicated that point to people, but nobody was doing it when we did infield, so that was kind of disappointing.

As a first practice, I guess it wasn't so bad. Especially since it was impromptu. But in the future, I think if we are serious about practices, we need to plan them out and decide how committed we are to improving. Bad practices suck in such a way that people will eventually decide that they "are too busy for practice". And then you don't improve. Oh well.

Bottom line: I have a lot of respect for people who teach or coach and do it well.

No 24 Vignettes Today

As a result of a monolithic amount of homework due tomorrow, I am spending tonight at Steward getting my shit done. Consequently, there ain't gonna be anything about 24 tonight. Aw heck, I'll make some predictions:

Beirus is forced to subdue his father (who is still unaware that Beirus is the mastermind behind the entire plan) with a Vulcan nerve pinch.

Uh yeah, that's pretty much all I can think of. Back to the grind.

Bigwhoop Interviews, The Continuing Saga

With no extras: All You Ever Wanted To Know About Andy Morrison.

No Couch Potato Am I

Before Andy hits me with another "Where are the interviews?" bullet, I'm going to post the very next interview: All You Ever Wanted To Know About Shane Bussmann.

I also thought this would be a good time to give you an update on the plant situation at my house. While Tiffany was here, I got two more plants. I have affectionately named them Fuzzball and Jaws. When you see the pictures, you'll know why. First though, take a look at what Spiff and Biff used to look like. Ok, now take a look at the current lineup. From left to right: Biff, Spiff, Fuzzball, and Jaws.

And, if you want, take a closer look at the new guys, Fuzzball and Jaws.

And, finally, an update on my plans for Lent: It's easy to give up video games when you've got great books to read! And thanks to receiving in the mail today Mike Caro's Book of Poker Tells, Pot Limit and No Limit Poker, and Winning Racquetball, I've got three great books to read! Should keep me busy through the weekend at least.

Bigwhoop Interview Update: Justin Aclin!!

And we have another interview completed in the historic "bigwhoop interview effort". Justin checked his bigwhoop email and has responded to my amazingly in-depth interview. So now, for your pleasure, I bring you... All You Ever Wanted To Know About Justin Aclin. Have fun.

Keeping It Real

Getting back to the mundane (that place which I frequent all too often...), I'd just like to take this opportunity to mention that Tiffany, my girlfriend, has left town on an airplane to the bay area. About an hour and a half ago, I turned in a homework set where I derived the time between the Big Bang and a given redshift as well as the comoving distance travelled by a photon between the Big Bang and a given redshift in a universe composed only of radiation.

I then repeated these calculations for the more difficult case of a general cosmology involving contributions from matter, curvature, and a cosmological constant, with the caveat that I confine the calculations to early times (i.e. high redshift) when the contribution from curvature and the cosmological constant is negligible.

Furthermore, I determined the comoving distance that a causal signal can propagate prior to a redshift of a 1000 in a universe of radiation and matter, finding the comoving distance in that case to be over an order of magnitude small than the present day size of the universe. I then did the same calculation except for the redshift at which matter and radiation make equal contributions to the Hubble Constant, which turns out to be a redshift of roughly 3500, resulting in an even smaller comoving distance. This leads to the alarming conclusion that the causally connected portion of the universe is shrinking to zero in coming coordinates, raising the question of how we can appeal to early causal physics to explain the homogeneity of the universe.

Lastly, I derived the optical depth that a photon encounters on its way from some redshift to us, assuming the universe is matter dominated, the universe is fully ionized, net electro-magnetic charge is zero, all of the baryons are in hydrogen, and that the density of nucleons in the universe is 3.8x10^-31 g/cm^3 today. Finally, I found that the optical depth is unity at a redshift of about 80. That last part may well be wrong.

If any of that didn't make sense, please comment below.

This is Shane Bussmann, keeping it real.

Taking It Easy

Don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy. Li--oops, sorry, got caried away with the title there.

Tiffany has been in town since Thursday night. Unfortunately, she's been sick most of the time, first with a nasty stomach virus and now with a sore throat. However, it's nice for me because I get a chance to take care of her. Still, I'm hoping she gets better soon.

Ash Wednesday Alert

I'm giving up video games of all kinds for Lent. We'll see how it goes.

More Fun with 24

Well we're only a few minutes away from yet another exciting episode of 24. I'm gonna try to multi-task here and play some poker (play money) at the same time.

7:00 - In 13 minutes, my Marie Callender's chicken pot pie is going to be finished warming up. Sorry, last off topic note.

7:01 - Son of a #$%^. Trading Spouses is on right now. False alaram...

7:02 - UConn vs. Syracuse is looking like a good game anyway.

7:08 - Syracuse goes stone cold. Game over.

7:14 - Finished 3rd. Went all in with pocket kings and the other guy picked up an ace on the flop. What are you gonna do?

7:41 - Finished eating my pot pie. Somewhere in the past twenty minutes I finished 3rd in another small tourney. Now I'm playing in another one. These tourneys are 10 people and generally take 15-30 minutes, depending on how long I last.

7:46 - Managed to find poker on TV.

7:57 - I can't miss 24, but I can't stand watching ANY part of Trading Spouses. This is gonna be a close call.

8:10 - Evil black chick is about to make a mistake, big time.

8:11 - The trap is laid. She's as good as dead. Well, she would be if Jack Bauer was anywhere near CTU. As it is, she'll probably get away.

8:12 - Darnit, they have ads at the same time on Fox (24) and Fox Sports Net (Poker). Bummer.

8:16 - That's a nice way to meet someone, when they're holding a gun in front of your face.

8:20 - Tony's girlfriend is obviously a terrorist.

8:23 - Oh, if only Jack Bauer had been around. He never would have been fooled by that ruse.

8:29 - Sucks to be interrogated when you're innocent... Or is she innocent??? Maybe she's in league with the evil black chick!

8:33 - C'mon Jack! Trust no one!! You can't possibly believe the situation is resolved.

8:35 - Jack's buddy is a dead man. You heard it here first.

8:37 - Ugh, the poker is over and instead we get "Best Damn Sports Show", which is actually the worst damn sports show in recorded history.

8:43 - Nothing like a drunk counter-intelligence agent. Yeah!

8:46 - What do you do if you're a doctor in that situation? Help her and send her on her merry way? Or call the police, thinking that's in the best interests?

8:51 - Chubby bald guy actually has some smarts to him. He's taking some risks too... Ooh, she knows she got SET UP!

8:53 - This is exactly when you need Jack Bauer!!!! Vindication!! Whoa.

8:55 - Jack Bauer, not fast enough?? No way! Got him!

8:57 - Seems like the season might as well be over. Too much good stuff happening. All right, well, that definitely needed to happen.

Ok, back to cosmology homework.

Saturday Night Grocery Shopping

I went to the grocery store last night for my usual weekly food run. Normally, however, I go in the afternoon. So it was a little different last night. One positive was there were fewer people. And I had a little chuckle to myself at the checkout area, when the person before me purchased... you guessed it, alcohol (in the form of two bottles of wine). And then the person after me purchased... yes, that's right, alcohol (this time two forties and Jaeigermeister). It was funny. I mean, who goes to the grocery store Saturday night and actually buys food? I do.

Interviews

I offer my most sincere apologies at the relative dearth of interviews of the bigwhoop folks in recent times. Selflessly, I'm going to put 100% of the blame on Justin Aclin's shoulders here, since he's had an interview sitting in his inbox waiting to be answered for quite some time now.

However, I'm announcing that we're skipping Justin (for now). That means the next person is... me! Yeah, it should be good...