Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: Request

« on: August 05, 2012, 04:12:14 pm »

I believe that cities and towns should have the right to reject for-profit businesses they don't deem a positive influence in the community, but it should always come down to a vote.  If a city doesn't want a casino built, they should have that right.  The issue comes becomes "more interesting" when it's something like bigotry, but I still feel it should be up to the community.  I'd be far more interested in a community banning all fast food restaurants rather than just the bigot ones, though. The exception to this should be that there be no discrimination to the well being people or a group in a community; there shouldn't be towns banning abortion clinics, as that potentially affects the health and well being of women, but I'm okay with towns banning gay bathhouses.  It is a slippery slope though; I don't disagree.

I'm sure I haven't thought out all the different parts of this, but yeah.  It would be a lot easier if everyone just stopped hating everyone.

Remember, letting the majority choose the rights of the minority is a horrible idea.

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General Discussion / Re: Graphing huge amounts of data

« on: August 08, 2010, 11:17:32 pm »

MATLAB isn't free though.

There is however its open source equivalent, Octave. It is used on some of the fastest super computers in the world so I'm reasonable sure it can handle your 170 million datapoints.

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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: March 26, 2010, 02:21:34 am »

I don't think we can be friends if you end up at UT... Just sayin'.

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Academic / School / Re: Post your Schedule SP2010

« on: December 20, 2009, 04:27:11 pm »

If his diffEQ class was anything like the one for which I took a final today, that class is a joke. Rather than get into any theory as to how to describe a relationship and why the differential is what it is, you take for granted that the diffeq is what they give you and you go about solving it. We learned two general ways to solve diffeqs (laplace transforms and the "assume a solution" method) and then various subsects of them.
Snooze.Fest.

This is pretty much how my diff eq. class was, except we had Fourier series in there too. Partial diff eq. which I just took ended up being much more of the same, assume and solution and then turn the crank on the problem.

And having a formula sheet doesn't mean its concepts based... in my PDE class we were given a "generously provided reference" sheet with solutions to everything.

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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: October 26, 2009, 08:57:23 pm »

Trust: is your computer's date and time set correctly? Thats the first thing to come to mind...

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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: October 26, 2009, 03:51:48 pm »

Sounds like someone is actually doing a MITM attack, awesome!

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General Discussion / Re: Google Wave

« on: October 25, 2009, 05:54:37 pm »

I'll give it a shot, razorm@gmail.com

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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: October 25, 2009, 02:58:04 am »

Writing about myself for this NSF fellowship sucks 

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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: October 19, 2009, 12:08:16 am »

I'm glad to see there was a bit of consensus that the complex class is the way to go. I will definitely look into it more now! Thanks everyone

10

General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: October 17, 2009, 05:59:31 pm »

Why on the subject of math, maybe someone can recommend me a good course to take next semester? I've done a lot of engineering math courses, enough for a math minor (I'd have a B.A. in math but I need ~13 hours of foreign language).

Looking at what courses I can pick from I see these:
Modern Geometry - An introduction to geometry including axiomatics, finite geometry, convexity, and classicalEuclidean and non-Euclidean geometry.
Introduction to Functions of a Complex Variable - Complex analytic functions, conformal mappings, complex integrals. Taylor and Laurent series, integration by the method of residues, complex analytic functions and potential theory.
Introduction to Abstract Algebra I - Concepts from set theory; the system of natural numbers, extension from the natural numbers to the integers; semigroups and groups; rings, integral domain and fields
Applied Modern Algebra - Topics from the theory of error correcting codes, including Shannon's theorem, finite fields, families of linear codes such as Hamming, Golay, BCH, and Reed-Solomon codes. Other topics such as Goppa codes, group codes, and cryptography as time permits
Introduction to Analysis I - Review of real number system. Sequences of real numbers. Topology of the real line. Continuity and differentiation of functions of a single variable.
Introduction to Topology - Metric spaces and topological spaces, continuity, connectedness, compactness and related topics.
Partial Differential Equations - First order equations, Cauchy problem for higher order equations, second order equations with constant coefficients, linear hyperbolic equations (Grad. Class)
Wavelets - Fourier analysis on a finite cyclic group, the group of integers, and the real line. The matching pursuit algorithm. The Poisson summation formula and sampling. Multi-resolution analysis, various wavelet constructions (including those of Daubechies and Meyer) and filter banks. An introduction to the MATLAB wavelet toolbox. (Grad. Class)

Are any of these really enlightening classes or cover subjects that are neat? I'm eyeballing the Wavelets class...

11

General Discussion / Re: What are you up to?

« on: October 05, 2009, 09:47:28 pm »

Definitely. Hallowscream is fun. I'm guessing you've never been to Busch Gardens so it's probably even better.

Yes on both counts! Busch Gardens was sooo much fun, I rode everything but the griffin 'cause I'm too much of a pansy to be suckered into doing that without a hot chick being present.

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General Discussion / Re: What are you up to?

« on: October 04, 2009, 12:17:43 am »

Going to Williamsburg, VA at the beginning of October

Why? Go to Hallowscream!

Attending a radar conference. Doing the Hallowscream adventure tomorrow too!

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General Discussion / Re: What are you up to?

« on: September 23, 2009, 03:17:35 am »

* Where are you living? (City/State/Province)
Norman, OK

* What are you up to? (where are you going to school? working?)
Finishing my senior year at the University of Oklahoma. And then onwards to grad school! Also working part time at NSSL and racking up the referred publications.

* What do you do for fun these days? (games/sports/etc)
Party, football, tinker with programming things, storm chase, etc.

* Are you dating/married?
Negative

* Did you go anywhere cool in the past year or two?
Uh, lots of places, I'll just do this year though!
Phoenix, AZ in January
Toronto, Canada in May
Boulder, CO in June
Disneyland & Vegas in August
Going to Williamsburg, VA at the beginning of October
and Kyoto, Japan in November

14

General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: September 06, 2009, 02:50:44 am »

Damn you towelie. Making me look like some stoner punk.

I wonder how filtered bong water would taste, though.

Fill your bong with Dr. Pepper instead.

Yes, this!

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General Discussion / Re: Let's hear it!

« on: May 24, 2009, 09:58:04 pm »

Canada is.... kinda cool!