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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!
« on: March 17, 2009, 03:19:34 pm »
You might want to start thinking about anger management classes...
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17
General Discussion / Re: What did you do today?
« on: March 11, 2009, 03:20:19 am »
What did I do today? A lot of shit.
Went to work, there I worked on debugging realtime hydro model which is still having growing pains but is months ahead of schedule, yay me.
I also worked on the calibration method for this model working on a different basin. Doing so involves learning cluster computing and using the universities super computing resources, its a giant pain in the ass.
Then I ate lunch with my boss and another friend and then attended a meeting with the boss+a professor+some of his grad students, waaay fun, hah.
That was followed by going to the main part of campus for my one class of the day, on the way to class I stopped to help one of my fellow classmates with some linear algebra she was having trouble with.
Soo... I sat in class for awhile and looked at facebook/worked on matlab issues re: super computing while the professor rambled on about solving ODEs using numerical methods.
Class was followed by a quick dinner and Dynamics II homework. 7 problems took 5 hours, ugh
And now I am here, avoiding writing this statement of interest that I told a professor I would have for him tomorrow. Yuck!
Went to work, there I worked on debugging realtime hydro model which is still having growing pains but is months ahead of schedule, yay me.
I also worked on the calibration method for this model working on a different basin. Doing so involves learning cluster computing and using the universities super computing resources, its a giant pain in the ass.
Then I ate lunch with my boss and another friend and then attended a meeting with the boss+a professor+some of his grad students, waaay fun, hah.
That was followed by going to the main part of campus for my one class of the day, on the way to class I stopped to help one of my fellow classmates with some linear algebra she was having trouble with.
Soo... I sat in class for awhile and looked at facebook/worked on matlab issues re: super computing while the professor rambled on about solving ODEs using numerical methods.
Class was followed by a quick dinner and Dynamics II homework. 7 problems took 5 hours, ugh
And now I am here, avoiding writing this statement of interest that I told a professor I would have for him tomorrow. Yuck!
18
General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!
« on: January 30, 2009, 11:04:14 pm »Holy shit I'm pissed off.
My diff EQ teacher gave me 0% credit for a 15% problem when I got the RIGHT answer doing it the RIGHT way. Just not HIS way. That isn't the only discrepancy on this test, just the worst. I got a D on it when if my last teacher graded it, it would have been at LEAST an A-.
Most of these comments are a good description of him: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=505879&page=2
Rookie mistake.
19
General Discussion / Re: Rupert's Photo Thead...
« on: January 26, 2009, 08:02:49 pm »
Thread needs more cheerleaders!
20
General Discussion / Re: XKCD: metric conversions
« on: January 05, 2009, 07:09:27 pm »Right now where I live, it's "Spit goes 'clink' cold", and that's a slightly cold winter day (and my spit doesn't go 'clink', I've tried).
Clearly the problem here is that you aren't tall enough to provide the water sufficient time to freeze.
Lets say you spit 1 gram of water and its at the same temperature as your body (~37C)
So dQ = M*Cp*dT + M*L = 1/1000 * 4.18 * 37 + 1/1000 * 334000 = 334.15 J
So if you spit from a height of 2m you have 0.64 seconds before it hits the ground. Thus you need to remove ~523.03 J s^-1 to freeze the water before it hits the ground.
After this you can go ahead and compute how much energy the wind is removing from the air per second and such.
21
General Programming / Re: Programming Contest
« on: December 26, 2008, 08:21:14 pm »
Why not spend your time doing the 30 day challenge or something like that?
22
General Discussion / Re: anyone handy with the shoops?
« on: December 13, 2008, 03:23:27 am »
Your best bet (imho) is to mirror the image and have symmetry. You could probably then brush the girl out and fill in what is left. This way you'll get the path and such to atleast look natural.
24
General Discussion / Re: Grad School vs. Industry
« on: November 06, 2008, 09:54:52 pm »Well, keep in mind that I work in a funny field. In IT Security, academics write all kinds of great papers and proofs that have absolutely no relevance in the real world, while people who aren't from academic backgrounds (often who have never taken a class) write all kinds of great papers and do tons of research that directly applies.
There's a huge disconnected between academics/non-academics in IT Security. Nobody at the place I work has a degree, for example, and they're considered at the top of their game.
I mostly wanted to build a post around making fun of the complex arguments thing
Aren't these types of jobs typically referred to as grunt work? I'm not trying to insult you/say this is absolutely the case but generally when you have a job where a degree is not required its because the job is more application of specific skills than thinking. I can definitely see IT Security being that way, I'd care more that a person knows how to properly administrate a firewall than that they know the theory behind how all the circuits inside the shiny box work. See McDonalds for another case in point..
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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!
« on: November 01, 2008, 01:40:20 am »
I have never heard of any of the professors at Oklahoma doing anything like that. Infact in most of my classes it is specifically stated that the curve is only done to help students and 90%+ is a guaranteed A. I have seen this for classes from different departments so I suspect it is a university wide deal.
I often find it interesting how policies like this can vary from place to place. It really makes you wonder what it actually means when someone says they have X.XX GPA...
I often find it interesting how policies like this can vary from place to place. It really makes you wonder what it actually means when someone says they have X.XX GPA...
26
General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!
« on: October 27, 2008, 07:40:56 pm »Failed my first physics midterm. Pretty miserably. I don't even have the results and I know I failed it miserably.
Talking to a lot of the kids in the class, they think they failed it too. Suddenly it makes sense why he curves top 30% of the class at the end to an 'A' no matter what your percent.
Maybe physics isn't for me? Maybe the honors class isn't for me? :/
"Failing" an exam is all relative. You might have gotten a 30% on that, but if he curves that to a B, who cares? (Yes, my physics class was like this).
27
General Programming / Re: 3d Tracking
« on: October 24, 2008, 06:25:22 pm »
I should also add that if you do want to try something like echo location from timing, you'd be much much better off with a single fixed transmitter instead of like 4 or something. Atleast to start with anyways, this would greatly reduce the complexity of your system!
28
General Programming / Re: 3d Tracking
« on: October 24, 2008, 06:19:28 pm »
My suggestion is to forget trying to do echo location, you're going to need fancy hardware and stuff for that apparently.
It might be much easier to have 4 transmitters at fixed points that transmit continuously, and then put 2 directional antennas on the person of interest. Find a way to move the antennas so that they move to a location of maximum signal and triangulate your position based on that.
Alternatively, if you're assuming that the object won't be suddenly dropped into your room you can use more traditional methods for tracking your position in the room. Much more simple and easy to implement I believe.
It might be much easier to have 4 transmitters at fixed points that transmit continuously, and then put 2 directional antennas on the person of interest. Find a way to move the antennas so that they move to a location of maximum signal and triangulate your position based on that.
Alternatively, if you're assuming that the object won't be suddenly dropped into your room you can use more traditional methods for tracking your position in the room. Much more simple and easy to implement I believe.
29
General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!
« on: October 17, 2008, 11:12:32 pm »
I took linear algebra this summer, and there was this one math major.. holy hell was she ever hot. Definitely in the top 5 most attractive girls I've ever met.
But unfortunately for myself, totally married too
But unfortunately for myself, totally married too
30
General Discussion / Re: Google Goggles
« on: October 09, 2008, 06:09:08 pm »
Its a favorite past time here to go drinking and then derive equations... because if you can do 'em when you can barely stand you can do them on the test!