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edenfallingRandom things I have done recently, in no particular order:
1. Spent a couple days studying the construction of porches and the placement of gutters on the houses I pass on my way to and from work, in an effort to figure out why one particular porch struck me as abnormally ugly, and to make myself aware of things I tend not to notice. (The porch is ugly for several reasons -- bad paint job [by which I mean bad colors and the paint is peeling], roof about a foot too low, solid walls instead of banisters and railings, solid wall descending nearly a foot from the roof to meet the support pillars, pillars too thick and squat, etc. The overall effect is like a dank, decaying cave, and I cannot figure out how the house's inhabitants can sit there for hours at a time without descending into utter existential despair. It is just that awful.)
2. Read Ghost Story, Jim Butcher's newest Dresden Files novel. I am deeply iffy on the increasingly Christian metaphysical backdrop to that universe and I hope it either fades away or is revealed as a red herring to some degree, but I loved the flashbacks and am looking forward to see where Butcher decides to take the series next. :-) (I think that is vague enough that I am not going to spoiler cut. If you want to discuss anything more detailed with me, please do put a spoiler warning at the top of your comment!)
3. Sliced my right index finger up rather badly when trying to change an air conditioner filter at work. The cut is half an inch long and deep enough that, unlike the sting of a paper cut, it didn't start hurting until I got to the bathroom and started to wash it out. It took two bandaids before the cut stopped bleeding enough that the third bandage stayed on and didn't leak blood through the pad. (I am frankly amazed I was able to type at all on Saturday night, let alone write something like 6,000 words!)
4. Read The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means To Be Alive, by Brian Christian, which is about a guy who hears about the Loebner Prize (i.e., an iteration of the Turing Test held each year in the UK) and immediately decides he wants to participate and also write a book about the experience. It is very interesting and I am glad I read it, though I do take some issue with his definition of poetry. Then again, he is apparently a poet in addition to being a computer scientist, philosopher, and writer of articles for science magazines, so I suppose his thing about poetry comes with the territory. *wry* (And it's funny that that is the thing my mind snagged on the most, out of everything in his book, but the mind is a funny thing.) Hmm, what else, what else... Oh, right. Christian's discussion of conversations and how to move them out of rote exchanges into a genuine interaction is something I think most people should read, whether you give a damn about the Turing Test of not.
5. Worked out some details of my impending mini-trip to NJ with Vicky and Susan. I am heading down for Susan's birthday party, but rather than renting a car, I am getting a ride from Vicky, who is staying at our parents' house for a while until she goes back to D.C. to start training for a consulting job with the FBI -- something to do with giving and evaluating language fluency exams, I think. Anyway, Vicky will meet me at my apartment Thursday afternoon, I will be in Madison Friday and Saturday, and my Mom (who, along with my Dad, arrives back from London on Saturday afternoon) will drive me back to Ithaca Sunday morning so I can close the smoke shop that night.
Tangent: So why are my parents in London? Well, therein hangs a tale. My Dad's father (Grandpa) was a scientist. He started in electrical engineering, moved on to a Ph.D in physics, and from there got involved in myriad fields, including geochronology and space exploration. Among many other things, he was one of the first people to build a mass spectrometer that didn't break if you looked at it funny; he separated U-235 from U-238 so people could figure out which isotope they needed for the Manhattan Project; he worked on the Viking space probes, building instruments to analyze the atmosphere of Mars; and I believe that, as part of his work to determine atomic weights for the periodic table, he was the person who first realized that you can't define the atomic weight of lead past a certain number of decimal points, because it keeps changing as the ratio of lead isotopes changes as other elements decay and produce more lead. (Don't quote me on that last one; my dad is the historian of science and technology, not me, and I may well be misremembering his stories.)
Grandpa was a busy man. If he had stuck to a single area of study longer, he would probably be better known, but he had a habit of saying, "Oh look, I have figured out how to do this interesting thing, and I believe you could use that framework to do these other five really nifty things, but now I am going to go investigate something completely different because I think I see a way mass spectrometry could be useful in yet another field," and then the people who actually did use his framework to investigate the five really nifty things got famous for it while Grandpa was off having fun somewhere else. Which is a good way to run a life, but perhaps not so useful when building a career and a reputation outside of the scientific research community.
(...Oh, all right, here is his Wikipedia article, here is a page with more detail on his scientific accomplishments, and here is a proper biographical sketch/obituary with a heavy focus on his work over his personal life. And yes, that is my legal surname. Please do not ever use it on this journal.)
Anyway, after Grandpa died, Ardis established a prize in his name, awarded by the Meteoritical Society (they study meteors, not the weather), which she personally handed out every year at the society's annual meeting. My dad and my aunt have neither the time nor the drive to continue that pattern, but my parents figured that as long as the meeting is held someplace they already have an interest in visiting someday, they might as well kill two birds with one stone.
Hence London.
6. Finished my Narnia Fic Exchange story, of course. \o/ And hey, when it is posted (and you will know when it is posted, if you are following the NFE community and have read my previous Narnia fic), if you want to leave con-crit, I would be endlessly grateful, because if ever a story needed some constructive tearing-apart so it can be put back together better, that one does. :-)
And now to bed.
1. Spent a couple days studying the construction of porches and the placement of gutters on the houses I pass on my way to and from work, in an effort to figure out why one particular porch struck me as abnormally ugly, and to make myself aware of things I tend not to notice. (The porch is ugly for several reasons -- bad paint job [by which I mean bad colors and the paint is peeling], roof about a foot too low, solid walls instead of banisters and railings, solid wall descending nearly a foot from the roof to meet the support pillars, pillars too thick and squat, etc. The overall effect is like a dank, decaying cave, and I cannot figure out how the house's inhabitants can sit there for hours at a time without descending into utter existential despair. It is just that awful.)
2. Read Ghost Story, Jim Butcher's newest Dresden Files novel. I am deeply iffy on the increasingly Christian metaphysical backdrop to that universe and I hope it either fades away or is revealed as a red herring to some degree, but I loved the flashbacks and am looking forward to see where Butcher decides to take the series next. :-) (I think that is vague enough that I am not going to spoiler cut. If you want to discuss anything more detailed with me, please do put a spoiler warning at the top of your comment!)
3. Sliced my right index finger up rather badly when trying to change an air conditioner filter at work. The cut is half an inch long and deep enough that, unlike the sting of a paper cut, it didn't start hurting until I got to the bathroom and started to wash it out. It took two bandaids before the cut stopped bleeding enough that the third bandage stayed on and didn't leak blood through the pad. (I am frankly amazed I was able to type at all on Saturday night, let alone write something like 6,000 words!)
4. Read The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means To Be Alive, by Brian Christian, which is about a guy who hears about the Loebner Prize (i.e., an iteration of the Turing Test held each year in the UK) and immediately decides he wants to participate and also write a book about the experience. It is very interesting and I am glad I read it, though I do take some issue with his definition of poetry. Then again, he is apparently a poet in addition to being a computer scientist, philosopher, and writer of articles for science magazines, so I suppose his thing about poetry comes with the territory. *wry* (And it's funny that that is the thing my mind snagged on the most, out of everything in his book, but the mind is a funny thing.) Hmm, what else, what else... Oh, right. Christian's discussion of conversations and how to move them out of rote exchanges into a genuine interaction is something I think most people should read, whether you give a damn about the Turing Test of not.
5. Worked out some details of my impending mini-trip to NJ with Vicky and Susan. I am heading down for Susan's birthday party, but rather than renting a car, I am getting a ride from Vicky, who is staying at our parents' house for a while until she goes back to D.C. to start training for a consulting job with the FBI -- something to do with giving and evaluating language fluency exams, I think. Anyway, Vicky will meet me at my apartment Thursday afternoon, I will be in Madison Friday and Saturday, and my Mom (who, along with my Dad, arrives back from London on Saturday afternoon) will drive me back to Ithaca Sunday morning so I can close the smoke shop that night.
Tangent: So why are my parents in London? Well, therein hangs a tale. My Dad's father (Grandpa) was a scientist. He started in electrical engineering, moved on to a Ph.D in physics, and from there got involved in myriad fields, including geochronology and space exploration. Among many other things, he was one of the first people to build a mass spectrometer that didn't break if you looked at it funny; he separated U-235 from U-238 so people could figure out which isotope they needed for the Manhattan Project; he worked on the Viking space probes, building instruments to analyze the atmosphere of Mars; and I believe that, as part of his work to determine atomic weights for the periodic table, he was the person who first realized that you can't define the atomic weight of lead past a certain number of decimal points, because it keeps changing as the ratio of lead isotopes changes as other elements decay and produce more lead. (Don't quote me on that last one; my dad is the historian of science and technology, not me, and I may well be misremembering his stories.)
Grandpa was a busy man. If he had stuck to a single area of study longer, he would probably be better known, but he had a habit of saying, "Oh look, I have figured out how to do this interesting thing, and I believe you could use that framework to do these other five really nifty things, but now I am going to go investigate something completely different because I think I see a way mass spectrometry could be useful in yet another field," and then the people who actually did use his framework to investigate the five really nifty things got famous for it while Grandpa was off having fun somewhere else. Which is a good way to run a life, but perhaps not so useful when building a career and a reputation outside of the scientific research community.
(...Oh, all right, here is his Wikipedia article, here is a page with more detail on his scientific accomplishments, and here is a proper biographical sketch/obituary with a heavy focus on his work over his personal life. And yes, that is my legal surname. Please do not ever use it on this journal.)
Anyway, after Grandpa died, Ardis established a prize in his name, awarded by the Meteoritical Society (they study meteors, not the weather), which she personally handed out every year at the society's annual meeting. My dad and my aunt have neither the time nor the drive to continue that pattern, but my parents figured that as long as the meeting is held someplace they already have an interest in visiting someday, they might as well kill two birds with one stone.
Hence London.
6. Finished my Narnia Fic Exchange story, of course. \o/ And hey, when it is posted (and you will know when it is posted, if you are following the NFE community and have read my previous Narnia fic), if you want to leave con-crit, I would be endlessly grateful, because if ever a story needed some constructive tearing-apart so it can be put back together better, that one does. :-)
And now to bed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-08 12:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-09 02:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-08 12:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-09 02:31 am (UTC)He died when I was twelve. I still miss him.
note
Date: 2011-09-20 08:52 pm (UTC)My husband does some research with a mass spectrometer. He thinks your grandfather was awesome. Without your grandfather's work - well, husband wouldn't be where he is today (he wanted me to tell you).
For my part, I've got a friend who's grandfather invented the chicken nugget. There's a song written about that. (here: http://www.paulandstorm.com/lyrics/nugget-man/ it's pretty funny.)
Perhaps someday, some mass-spec loving grad student will also write a tribute to your grandfather. (I'd suggest husband do it, but he is not musical at all.)
Re: note
Date: 2011-09-23 03:09 am (UTC)