Spur of the Moment Craziness

It's been a while since I've last spewed anything out -- Finals really left me dead and grad school applications didn't help me any.

So a friend and I decided that it would be fun to see if we could get any contact information for Dan Balan. For those of you who aren't familiar with popuclture, there used to exist a Moldovan band called "O-Zone". The three members were Dan Balan, Arsenie Toderas, and Radu Sarbu. Anyway, my friend, Elena, who was lucky enough to see them live in concert while she was in Moldova and even luckier to have met Arsenie in person, decided to try to do a search for an address or a phone number. We heard rumors that Dan Balan was somewhere in the LA area, so we started searching. No real luck and I didn't quite have the guts (or the funding) to invest in a real search to confirm/deny any possible hits we found. It would be fun if we could get into contact with a celebrity like any of the members of the now-dead band, O-Zone. Who knows, maybe we'll have some luck...

And who says that aspiring professors have to be mature?

Edition 2 of Finals Rant, Part 2 of n

Actually this has been a fairly quiet finals week, cold symptoms aside.

I just want to get them over and for some reason all I've been wanting to do is archery, but unfortunately, I also need to think about my academic future. Plus it's been a bit cold, and although I'm almost impervious to what people in LA call cold, being sick and sleep-stressed does make things a lot more difficult.

Anyways... here's what I really felt like posting:
Let x1= # species on Island 1
x2= # species on Island 2
M= immigration rate from mainland
E= extinction rate
c= rate of exchange between islands
x1=x1(M-Ex1+cx2); x2=x2(cx1-Ex2)
Find and classify fixed points
∂x1/∂x1 ∂x1/∂x2
A=
∂x2/∂x1 ∂x2/∂x2

This was the fake introductory slide I used for a biogeography final presentation as a joke :)

Edition 2 of Finals Rant, Part 1 of n

It's finals again! This time it shouldn't be as bad as the last round, but who knows...

First a few words of wisdom:
1) Cold medicine + too much chocolate + too much coffee + too little sleep = hallucinations and spazz fits. Trust me. Don't attempt this!

2) Adding lime juice to a latte = BAD idea

I just can't wait to get finals overwith, preferably with decent grades this time and getting my grad school applications done well. And hopefully I can "earn" a shot at an upcoming local archery tournament a week from tomorrow... :)

My brain is letting out lots of steam, almost done with my application to Stanford and my final project for remote sensing seminar. More on finals later. I just felt like goofing off a bit.

Ouch ouch ouch -- Do Not Attempt This Stunt!

A few random words of wisdom that hit even closer to home than before...

1) Stretch thoroughly before attempting anything strenuous or extensive flexibility
2) Bone is hard... and being hit by something hard hurts!
3) Shins are very vulnerable to ouchies and are not the best shields against a nice solid foot or another shin!

So basically... I learned these lessons from Tae Kwon Do earlier tonight. I did some pretty aggressive sparring and managed to take a lot of blows to the shins, mostly from bumping shins with fellow white belts who are just as clueless and/or klutzy as I am! And then there was the whole not-quite-stretching enough before class. I think I pulled something in my left leg and I'm now hobbling about... I just knew something wasn't quite right when I was about to deliver a nice solid hook kick to my opponent and then I suddenly felt everything in my left leg tense up... and then I just kinda curled up in pain. At first it wasn't too bad since I did try to take care of it in the locker room after class since it did occur towards the end of class, but as if that weren't enough, I ended up practicing that same kick at home, thinking I was still pre-stretched... and then in another flash of luck and brilliance, I bumped my leg in the shower -- the same one that's already kinda sore... OUCH!!! So my poor left leg is now all tenderized and bumpy. And I still have a bump and several bruises on my right leg from using it as a shield...

Thank goodness for my hiking pole or I'd have to look even more foolish with a cane or worse! And thank goodness for all my experience with ouchies like this to know when it's just ugly as all hell and just a minor inconvenience to be treated with a bit of TLC and some hot towels and a massage... or if it's something I need to haul my tail to the doctor for.

Anyway, enough ranting here and back to work...

GRE Biology Exam

So this past weekend, along with many other aspiring graduate students, I took the GRE subject exam in biology. The overall comment, as my friends would say, was SN-2. For those of you who don't know organic chemistry, it's basically a reaction mechanism also known as "back-side attack". In other words, one molecule rams another one from behind and at the same time knocks off the leaving group and the effect looks a lot like an umbrella being turned inside-out. It was a pretty tough exam, especially for someone who doesn't generally memorize things very well. But I have to admit, the experimental/data interpretation questions were a lot of fun just trying to deduce answers on techniques I had no clue on. I don't know how I did, just that I'm glad that it's over and I pretty much did all I could to survive it! I still have tons of stuff to do for the rest of my grad school application stuff, but at least the tests are over!

And to be really honest... I'd much rather be out at the range with my trusty 30lb Martin X-200 recurve or working on Project Argonium than being cooped up on campus, but I've got to do what I've got to do to get into a really nice graduate project.

Time to Build Up More Muscles

One thing I've been wanting to do for quite some time now is bow-hunting. Only thing is, to hunt anything of a reasonable size and take it out humanely without too much suffering, I have to be able to pull 40 lbs bare minimum, preferably 45 or 50 lbs. So I decided to try my hand at a 45 lb compound bow, not realizing that unlike a recurve or a longbow, the compound bow is very hard to pull initially and then it's easy to hold up at draw length. I'm used to a recurve, where it's easy to pull and then the real effort is in holding the pull. I can pull 35 lbs reasonably well on a recurve without suffering too much and 40 lbs is doable but my aim suffers and I do have to rest periodically... as for 45... well, let me tell you what happened... Having a bit of an ego, I decide to try my hand on a 45 lb compound bow. I try to pull and my face is turning red and I'm straining pretty hard to get it to move. All the while, the store-keeper (who knows me pretty well since I've gone to hunter safety training and generally get the bulk of my archery supplies form there) is wincing and grinning at the same time.

The recommendations when I asked about different compound bow models and technical specs?

1) Shoot more! A lot more, even if it is on a lighter bow!
2) If I can't go shooting, then go weight-training.
3) Go for one of the more aggressive bows by Bowtech (www.bowtecharchery.com) after I can comfortably pull a recurve about 5-10 lbs heavier than my intended compound weight.

So yeah... I'm kinda sore from attempting to pull that 45 lb compound bow today. Oh, it didn't quite help that my ego drove me to try something else kinda stupid at the archery shop today. I tried shooting a nice 45 lb take-down recurve. I was able to do it with a fair bit of effort just to prove to myself that I'm not a weakling. Let's just say that's as much as I'm able to pull safely without killing myself. As if that weren't enough, I actually do shoot a few arrows with it and sure enough, my aim sucks. Ouch. Here I am now, wishing that I had someone to give me a nice shoulder massage after these acts of ego-driven idiocy!

Side-Project Argonium News

It's been a while since I've done anything with Side-Project Argonium, but I might finally be able to make some progress on it now that I suddenly have a tiny bit of extra time. I've upgraded from my little Sharpsicle harp to a much nicer Ravenna 26 by Dusty Strings (pictured on this entry). The ony thing I do like about the Sharpsicle is that it weighs about 1/3 as much as the Ravenna, but the tradeoff with the much more beautiful sound and full set of sharping levers is worth it.

So basically, most of the songs I'm tinkering with are either various Celtic pieces I have or songs by a band called O-Zone. However, there's also a few other songs that I'd like to play with, including the theme from Mononoke Hime and Spirited Away. If I can ever either make more room or find a nice place to get my stuff hosted, I'll try to post up more samples of what I'm working on. Right now, my website is a bit crammed and I need to remove a lot of stuff from it... more updates when the opportunities come...

Weary of LA

Seems like whenever I have some kind of academic deadline where it's pretty much "do-or-die", I get the urge to write something else... anyway, I'm feeling very much like just spewing out random thoughts now, mostly revolving around this insane restless urge I'm feeling.

Recently, I've acquired an unusually strong dislike for being in the city for whatever reason. However, I've been to a few cities that hasn't triggered my "I hate big cities" instincts: Vancouver, British Columbia (or to people in the USA, Canada) and Victoria, British Columbia. There's just so many things about these places that really attracts me -- the abundant forests and hiking trails just within an easy drive or even walk/bus trip away, the relatively clean air, the proximity to the sea, and the climate. They're still cities but they don't have the same kind of stifling feeling as Los Angeles, CA or even San Francisco. Some may argue it's what I make of the place, but there's just something very deep inside of me that makes me really want to return to Vancouver and Victoria. I didn't get that same tugging inside of me about Montreal for some reason. Must've been something about where I ended up staying for the ESA-INTECOL conference not too long ago and being in the Palais de Congress for that week...

Anyway, all I really want at this point is just to be able to roam about freely outdoors away from crowds, cars, smog, and admittedly, both Caltech and CSULA, which have dominated my life since 1997. Archery at the various places I've been finding has helped me tolerate life in LA a lot better, as well as the occasional sneak-retreat I take into some random wilderness location, but I know deep inside I need to leave LA as soon as I'm done at CSULA. I suspect that it's also this feeling of stagnation as well as my natural wanderlust and strong dislike for the cities that's driving my intense desire to leave LA. On the positive side, this weariness of living in LA is spurring me onwards to work on my PhD applications and I look forward to visiting and interviewing at the various schools. What adventures will I find outside of LA? And what will I find in my remaining time in LA?

Post ESA-INTECOL Short Update

Ever since ESA-INTECOL back in August, the following things have happened:
-- Got a major case of food poisoning over Labour Day weekend that left me feeling really weak and depressed to the point where I was ready to either go to the doctor for help or take a trip away from LA. I chose the latter.
-- Took a journey northwards (Vancouver) to both scout schools and to find some inner healing froman unusually rough academic year followed by a restless summer. Suffice to say, I'm one of those people who will literally pine away and go crazy without some time here and there alone in the wilderness, and there are few places that can re-energize me as well as a trip to the Pacific Northwest. Possibly more on that later.
-- Getting hit with a major urge to write more stories, which is going to make a mess of my academic situation unless I can find another good block of time to just sit there in private and let it all out.

ESA-INTECOL Meeting at Montreal, Part 2

This is the second part of the ESA-INTECOL series... and very much delayed

Monday August 8
First day of the conference and I woke up nice and early to hunt for some breakfast, again heading towards Rue de St. Catherine since that's the only area I knew for sure of food that was fairly cheap. I went to the Palais and went to a number of talks before realizing that I was falling asleep in the middle of some particularly bad ones. Not much to write about besides the large number of talks involving ecosystem function, carbon cycling, and advanced statistical methods. Then I had lunch at the Tim Horton's (a restaurant chain specializing in sandwiches and donuts) underneath the Palais, then I met up with the rest of my lab-mates to attend my lab's post-doc's talk. Strangely enough, though, it's been placed in the "Population and Movement Modelling" section and his talk is monitoring ecosystem function using remote sensing. Afterwards, there's a large migration of VCSARS lab people to the urban and riparian ecosystems session, where Suzanne, heanother of my labmates is giving a talk. She's nervous and panicked since she only finished prepping for her presentation, but in the end, her presentation comes across as organized and professional. That evening, I go out to dinner with my adviser, the post-doc, and this other guy in my lab and I end up getting ass-drunk from wine and Brazilian coffee. I get back to my room and decide to watch my drinking habits.

Tuesday, August 9
It's the day I preside over the session on arctic and boreal nutrient cycling. I was so nervous that I actually had trouble eating, although in the end, the post-doc convinces me to eat a really good bowl of pho. Strengthened, I preside over the session with hardly any glitches and I meet a post-doc from University of Florida who's working on a really cool project with carbon dynamics in the arctic. I drooled over the project and exchanged contact information. Hopefully I can get in on this project, if not one of the many I'm drooling over at Oregon State University or Stanford. That night, after a long presiding session in the afternoon and hanging out at my friend's poster, the students (minus the adviser) go out to dinner in some up-scale Mexican cafe in the French part.

Wednesday, August 10
That pretty much described my experience with trying to get my poster up since I'm really short and the poster boards were up pretty high. I ended up getting stuff up with the help of a statistics professor from Spain who had the same problem as I did about 5 minutes before I arrived. Together, we got my poster up :) It was a fairly uneventful day and during my poster presentation, I had many visitors who generally poked and prodded at my poster. There were a few visitors that really stood out, including a grad student from UC Berkeley who I had talked to many times at past conferences, the post-doc from University of Florida, and a grad student from somewhere in Korea who also was someone I kept seeing at other conferences. I definitely think University of Florida is a strong possibility, crappy location aside (deepest apologies to my friends who live out there... but this little one is a product of the Pacific Northwest!). I blank out on the rest of that evening -- I do remember going out to dinner with my adviser and two other students at this fancy vegetarian buffet and getting ass-drunk (again!) on beer, vodka, and what they call "Irish coffee".

Thursday, August 11
I woke up with a pretty massive case of nausea and a headache. After puttering around trying to deal with the hangover, I ended up just wandering around town since I didn't find any talks of interest. Nothing to write home about.

Friday, August 12
My last day at the conference. I pretty much attended all of the morning talks on either stomatal conductance modelling or on carbon and water dyamics in boreal ecosystems. There were many excellent talks that helped convince me that the real fun is going to be in carbon and/or northern ecosystems and I had a nice discussion about different statistical analyses to sort out eddy flux tower data. After sitting through some of the best talks the whole week, I ended up heading back to my room, dumping off my stuff, and then exploring more of Montreal. I plucked up the courage to rent a bike, which by the way, is an excellent way to travel... but only if the seat isn't one of those horribly hard skinny seats on road bikes. Aggravating the problem was the fact that the bike was a bit big for me since I'm very short. Three hours later, I returned the bike and hobbled back to the room, where I packed and relaxed to the best of my ability before heading home.

ESA-INTECOL Meeting at Montreal, Part 1

Je ne parlais Francois tre bien.

That seemed to be a line I used quite a bit when I was on my own in Montreal. Anyways, here's the highlights of the trip on a day-to-day basis. This will come in short installments as time allows since I seem to have been afflicted with a severe case of wanderlust...

Friday, August 5
The flights from Burbank and Dallas-Ft. Worth were fairly eventless, aside from the usual trouble of not being able to reach into the overhead bin to retrieve my poster and bumping my head while trying to step into my window seat on the plane. Getting to Montreal, however, was a lot more fun, especially when I had to hail a taxi to take me to the dorm room I was staying at, since by the time I went through customs and baggage claim, it was already about 20.30, so I was toast by then. The taxi driver said something in French but after a few attempts at my very limited French, including a few bits and pieces of Spanish and German, I finally pulled out the address of the place I was staying in and pointed to it. I was scared that I might get driven off to the wrong place, but thankfully, I got there safely. After checking in, my hunter instinct kicked in and i went out to search for food. Not having a clue, I decide to just walk in a random direction. What I didn't realize was that "random" led me to Rue St. Catherine, a part of town where every other door seemed to lead into a sex shop or a strip club. And then... the scariest thing happend to me. A man in his mid to late twenties approahced me and said something in French to me. I couldn't understand him, but I gathered the words "voulez vou coucher avec moi" (sp?) and something about money. Then the hunter left me and was replaced by the nerd. I bolted as fast as I could until I was clear and then after searching for a while, I gave up on the prospects of finding good food and settled for Burger King. Thank goodness for the universal language of fast food joints and the fact that they're tolerant of idiotic tourists/conference-goers who become tongue-tied!

Saturday, August 9
The first words that came out of my mouth when I woke up that morning: It's hot!. I had no air-conditioning in the room and it was pretty humid, so I wasn't exactly the happiest of campers, but I went off to 1) search for breakfast and 2) figure out where the Palais de Congres is. Breakfast wasn't too eventful, except for the fact that I was crazy enough to go back to Rue St. Catherine (AGAIN) since I noticed a lot of restaurants there along with the other stuff. It's much nicer in the day, but in my hunger, I almost walked into a strip club instead of the crepe place. The only thing that saved me was that I almost walked into a sign that had a bit of English on it that said Drag Queens Special. Go figure. Once I finished breakfast, I went to the Palais and did my usual registration thing. Only problem was that the person at the registration table had trouble with my last name and didn't believe me until I pulled out my passport and driver's license to prove that I am indeed who I was. With that over, I checked the schedule and location for presider training before embarking on a quest to at least identify potential hiding places around my lodging besides the, um, red-light district. This time, I went up Rue St. Denis, a long, busy street full of trendy shops and restaurants. Among the more... interesting ... places I passed by: several cafes with hookahs, a condom shop, and a pot shop. After a rather unsatisfying croissant for lunch at a small sandwich shop, I just kept going further up the street until I decided to return to the Palais for presider training. Along the way, I get hit with the creative bug and stop at an ice cream store, where I enjoyed some vegan ice cream while scribbling out lyrics that I need to put a melody to. Then I went to presider training, which was fairly uneventful aside from realizing that I was by far the youngest person and probably the only person in the room who didn't have a PhD yet. Put it this way... I felt rather... awkward around all these high-ranking scientists and professors. It went well, and I felt a lot more comfortable about presiding over a session after getting reassured that the worst things that could happen were equipment failures and people who had no concept of time since I had to keep the talks to 15 minutes and Q&A to 5 minutes. That night, I tried to force myself to sleep early, but my body hadn't adjusted to being on Eastern time and the heat + humidity + smell of pot smoke made it hard to sleep.

Sunday, August 9
I woke up really early, around 06.00 to make it in time to an 08.00 session on advanced statistical methods in ecology. After a rather yucky breakfast at Burger King, I made it to the Palais and found my way to the session. Note that the Palais is a real labyrinth and it's hard to find stuff at first. The session is great but there was a bit of a mix-up and the people forgot to provide us with tables, so I had to hold my super-heavy, monster of a laptop on my lap to following along with the examples in R. Not too far into the session, the post-doc in my lab, walks in and keeps me company in a sea of population and diversity ecolgists. He leaves shortly afterwards after he convinces me to let him have a copy of my poster so he can borrow some figures for his talk -- our research adviser had apparently wanted him to make some last minute changes. During the much-needed break, I go and find the post-doc to have lunch with him at some random Chinese restaurant where you have to be able to speak fluent Chinese to get the really good stuff. Afterwards, I go back, while the post-doc goes back to his presentation. The second half of the workshop was really boring... probably because the presenters weren't as interactive as the ones earlier and the material being covered was either far above my head or too elementary. I took a nice long nap. Then I went back to the dorm and started to scout around for more food areas. I ended up with a not-so-satisfying veggie and brie cheese sandwich and spent the rest of the evening working on Project Argonium, with little success thanks to the heat, humidity & stench of pot smoke.

Preliminary Argonium Material

Well... it's the night before I leave for Montreal for the annual Ecological Society of America conference... which should produce an interesting blog entry in itself, at least with my luck. One thing though is that I've finally had the guts to post some really preliminary Argonium material, at least non-embarassing stuff for someone with very limited training in composition and singing... and practically none in the harp. This includes a song where I wrote the lyrics but very loosely borrowed the melody line from a song that I can't get out of my head. With luck, the creative bug will be with me in Montreal (hopefully not while I'm presenting on carbon flux modelling or presiding over boreal/tundra nutrient cycle talks!) so I can really have some fun with Side-Project Argonium.

I have to admit, if I EVER had to leave science/engineering, I would want to dive into music. It's so much fun and it's a great stress relief! I know I'm probably going to remain in blissful obscurity, but hey, it's more for the fun than anything else. As that cliched saying goes... "Sing (or play other instrument) as if nobody's hearing!"

Mai-a-hee, Mai-a... oops!

So I've been working a bit on Project Argonium, which by the way, is moving a bit more slowly than I'd like because of the upcoming Ecological Society of America conference (which I'm presenting at and also presiding over a session on polar & boreal carbon cycles). Anyway, there's two songs by O-Zone that I especially enjoy and have an easy time actually remembering & pronouncing the lyrics. The first is "Despre Tine" and the second is "Dragostea Din Tei". (I love all of their songs actually... and I'm looking forward to what the three guys in the band, particularly Arsenium, are going to come up with). I digress, but anyway, I was heading out to work on some archery after about 2 hours of harp and vocal practice and I was still singing because I was having too much fun. For those of you who've never heard "Dragostea Din Tei", the song opens up with vocalizations that sounds like "Mai-a-hee, mai-a-hoo, mai-a-ho, mai-a-haha!" I was doing that part and I thought I was doing pretty well for someone with very little vocal training, since it does take a pretty wide vocal range to pull it off well.

Then I realized that I had several pairs of eyes on me, including the apartment manager and her adorable little sun conure (aka Napoleon if he were a parrot). The parrot merely started shrieking along with my... singing. Nobody really said anything directly to me, but I had a feeling that I hit on some sore nerves, judging from the puzzled glares I got. It was about 17.00hrs so I didn't think I'd disturb that many people, but now most of my neighbors just look at me funny.

As if that weren't enough, I got caught singing again, except this time I was singing "Despre Tine", which thankfully doesn't have any passages that remind me of a nice operatic aria. Just a simple, catchy tune with an easy vocal line. So I was driving to campus and I emerged from the car singing my heart out. As I was singing, someone who apparently had taken some huge lecture classes with me in the past, stopped me and started to talk to me:

Random Person (RP): Hey, I remember you from classes... what are you singing?
Me: It's a song called "Despre Tine" by O-Zone
RP: Is that Filipino? It doesn't sound Korean or Chinese at all and I can't think of any other language you might be able to sing in.
Me: Nope, it's Romanian.
RP: [makes some kind of funny noise and then wanders off]

To me, Romanian sounds like a linear combination of Spanish and Italian with a bit of Russian. Makes perfect sense to me since Romanian has Latin roots but also evolved near Russia... so go figure :P

Take-home lesson: Singing loudly in unexpected languages is fun!

Side-Project Argonium

The creative bug has struck again... and a new alias has hit me as well... Argonium

To make things relatively short... stay tuned for musical samples! Most of my planned works will be my own interpretations of favorite songs from all kinds of sources, but I may even have the guts to compose my own songs. We'll see about that. I will provide more details once I get some decent recordings.

Let's see where this impulsive act will lead me...

Reflection on Archery

So... in the weeks since the end of what I can only refer to as the quarter of death... I've become re-acquainted with an old hobby I had to put aside in the name of academics... namely archery.

There's just something about archery that not only relaxes me, but brings me back to life after months of sitting behind the computer and/or working on math problems no human should ever have to do by hand. It's very controlled, yet liberating at the same time. On one hand, I have to keep everything still, but once I let the arrow fly, there's an instant where I can see myself flying with that arrow. Granted, I can probably hit the haystack about 75% of the time from 30 meters and about 95% of the time from 15 meters, but my accuracy can only get better with practice and focus Archery also made me realize why I chose to become an ecologist instead of an engineer or chemist -- for all my complaining, dislike of hot weather, and love for cold, dark places, there's something about being outdoors in the fading sun (when I usually go) that wakes up another part of me. I can't quite explain it yet... just that I need my time outdoors periodically to function...

On a slightly lighter note, here's a few words of wisdom for any aspiring archers from experience:

1) Get arrows that stand out as strongly as possible against the ground/vegetation to minimize time in searching for arrows go way off the target

2) Pick a site that doesn't have poison oak anywhere near it -- Once, I was shooting and I picked a relatively shaded spot and one of my arrows landed in a patch of poison oak. Let's just say I decided that it would be cheaper for me to replace the arrow than for me to get poison oak treatment.

3) An arm guard or long sleeved shirt is highly recommended -- that bow string really hurts and even if you have scrawny arms like mine, it still hits hard when you let the arrow loose!

Ok... I'm getting hit with wanderlust again, so I might post more later on after I get it out of my system

Farewell to Dr. Charles David Keeling

I usually don't like serious posts, but I need to get this one out of my system after receiving a sad e-mail from a friend of mine in my research lab. It is with a heavy heart and a few tears that I post this -- the passing of one of the greatest scientists of our time. I had the privelege of meeting him at the annual MODIS conference at University of Montana last year and also hiking and chatting with him. He was a real character and extremely approachable, an energetic man who was not only one of the greatest minds but also embraced life eagerly. His papers were also inspiring to me when I read them -- they were easy to read and follow, but at the same time, spoke to me with a challenge to continue understanding the carbon cycle and climatic effects. My focus has shifted since to a remote sensing-driven model for water and carbon, but I still remember those papers from a global biogeochemistry class I took what now felt like a lifetime ago.

I, like the rest of my colleagues, will miss this wonderful scientist greatly...

Here's an excerpt and a link to the article:
"Charles David Keeling, the world's leading authority on atmospheric
greenhouse gas accumulation and climate science pioneer at Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego (UCSD),
died Monday, June 20, 2005, while at his Montana home, of a heart attack.
He was 77 years old. Keeling has been affiliated with Scripps since 1956."

A full article is at:
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=687

SpecNet Excitement

I can't quite hold this in, even if it may be a while before I actually pull this off...

I got positive reviews on my revised paper on the use of the 970nm water band index for monitoring chaparral evapotranspiration and so with a few more minor revisions, I'll get published in the SpecNet special edition of Remote Sensing of Environment. Even though I got the news yesterday, I'm still giddily happy about this since I've never really had anything published (unless you count me in an acknowledgement on someone's PhD dissertation on uranium sorption on various minerals), much less being the first author on a paper! I can't believe that I'd actually get this far, to actually be on the verge of being published in a pretigious journal! I feel... flattered... especially since in their e-mail to me they addressed me as Dr. and not Ms. or Miss... and to think that I haven't even started on my PhD yet! I know there's a lot of people who've published at earlier ages with less schooling/research experience than me in really prestigious journals but it's still a delightful feeling knowing that I actually did something significant and the thrill is up there with things like love's first kiss.

Don't Attempt This At Home

This actually happened a few weeks ago but I didn't have the nerve to post it then...

So I was enjoying a bottle of cranberry juice and I noticed that it tasted slightly different, but I assumed it was because my taste buds were slightly off from too little sleep, too much stress, and probably the super-spicy meal I just had. I just continued drinking and drinking it since it did taste really good. Then I tried to practice the harp and simple passages became unusually difficult for me. Ok, I'm just a bit tired. I'll start typing. Then I found that I couldn't type worth beans. Ok, so I'm REALLY tired. The real answer came up when I was walking around and found it hard to balance. This is getting weird. Then it struck me when I was starting to feel a headache come on and slightly nauseous. Holy crap, this feels like when I'm really drunk. I checked the expiration date on the bottle of cranberry juice, and sure enough, it was long past expiration. I was surprised I didn't see anything gross in it. And then the realization struck me -- I accidentally made moonshine and got drunk off of it! I finally put 1 and 1 together to make 10!

Let's just say... I now make it a point to be a lot more aware of what's in my fridge. I woke up with the biggest headache ever... actually, no, the second largest, with the absolute largest headache reserved for the time I walked into a wall with a nail sticking out of it and hit my forehead on the nail...

No More Finals!

Just wanted to say... as of tonight, I am now free of all my finals! No more term projects, homework sets, presentations, or anything else!

I am now a free... something or other!

I had more thoughts but my brain isn't quite functioning anymore. More later once I recover sufficiently to think :)

Finals Rant, Part 4 of n

I've been having to put a lot of entries in a short time, but then again, I suspect I won't be blogging as much once my nerves calm down :) Random thoughts... Coming to think of it, my blogging habits are a bit like TIN models (triangulated irregular network) which basically reprsent a landscape (or other space) with a network of edges, vertices and faces (ie, triangles) based on where the changes occur... different from the usual raster models which are basically square cells of fixed size and don't quite capture all the variation (more common) or overdo it on flat areas... or vector models whidc have a similar problem with either capturing too much (more common) or not enough. So yeah... right now my brain is like a bunch of tiny triangles and not a few large triangles.

Another few thoughts... is it caffeine in the bloodstream or blood in the caffeine stream? I don't remember anymore... Also for some reason, high stress levels do some funny things to the brain... somehow, I seem to have acquired a taste for the following things that I usually don't quite get too keen on:
1) Bluegrass & country music
2) Espresso without anything added
3) Eating more animal than plant products

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, a finish line for the marathon... and then I'll be able to go to my other happy place!

Finals Rant, Part 3 of n

Finals are really getting to me and I'm finding that blogging is a very good stress relief... Actually writing on anything but my term project is good stress relief :P but I digress...

Anyway, first thought... quickstep music. For those of you not familiar with ballroom, quickstep is a lively dance that's usually done to fast big-band music or other relatively fast swing-ish music. It looks a lot like waltz or foxtrot and it's a really fun dance, but the music usually drives me nuts after a while for some odd reason. Anyway, my new use for quickstep music: keeping myself from falling asleep while studying! It's so bouncy and it makes me feel much more cheerful than usual, so it's great for finals!

And the second thought... uhh... not existent... maybe once I get through double-death (aka my remote sensing and GIS modeling/spatial analysis classes) my brain might actually function

Actually the second thought was... unless you're insane, do not mix the following: caffeine, aspirin, claritin, 20 units of classes (especially if any involve heavy math or computer work), and sugar... it's a sure-fire recipe for spazz-out!

Finals Rant, Part 2 of n

So here's another installment of my finals ranting and raving... What's really on my mind right now... well, my final for the nonlinear dynamics course (CDS 104 at Caltech) that turned my brain into jello:

Consider the system: x' = x(1 - ax - y), y' = y(b - x - y) + h

Here a, b, and h are parameters. We assume that a, b > 0. If h > 0 then we are harvesting species y at a constant rate, while if h > 0, we add to the population y at a constant rate. The goal is to understand this system completely for all possible values of these parameters. As usual, we only consider the regime where x, y => 0. If y(t) <= 0 for any t > 0, then we consider this species to have become extinct.

1) First assume that h = 0. Give a complete synopsis of the behavior of this system by plotting the different behaviors you find in the a, b parameter plane.

2) Identify the points or curves in the ab-plane where bifurcations occur when h = 0 and describe them.

3) Now let h > 0. Describe the ab-parameter plane for various (fixed) h-values.

4) Repeat the previous exploration for h > 0.

5) Describe the full 3-D parameter space using pictures, flip books, 3D models, movies, or whatever you find most appropriate.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well... let's just say this this pretty much ripped me a new digestive tract... And no, I won't post my answers to them. At least not yet. There's still a gaggle of undergrads that are taking this final at Caltech. I don't want to violate the Honor Code .

I really should be working on the rest of my finals... More finals ranting on the way as my stress level reaches that unstable fixed point again!

Next installment: New uses for Foxtrot and Quickstep music and anything I can dig up about geography... maybe...

Finals Rant, Part 1 of n

I've reached a point where my mind is utterly and completely plugged up, at least as far as non-linear dynamics go. I have had it with bifurcations, as well as stability analyses, finding fixed points, and limit cycles! Of course, it's only a brief explosion of frustration that'll go away once I turn in my final and all :P

Anyway, the real reason for this post is to list the top 5 nasty classes I've taken, and trust me, I have taken so many classes that I could probably even do a top 10. Hell, why don't I just do the top 10?

Here's my top 10 nasty classes, with contributing factors including difficulty of assignments/projects, time consumed, dealing with the professors, dangers involved, and overall stress. The list will include the class number (if I remember), the campus, and when I took it just for kicks :)

Close contenders, but no cigar: Bio 101 (animal biology, Cal State LA), History of the Supreme Court (Caltech), Geog 269 (intro to GIS, Cal State LA)

10 -- ChE 103 Transport Phenomena, Caltech, Fall 2000
9 -- Ma 2b Introduction to Ordinary Partial Differential Equations, Caltech (taken twice, 1st time Winter 2000, 2nd time Winter 2001)
8 -- Ma 1abc Calculus of One and Many Variables, Caltech (a & b repeated -- Fall 1997, Winter 1998 1st time, Fall 1998 & Winter 1999 2nd time)
7 -- Bio 380 Cell Biology, Cal State LA, Winter 2005
6 -- CDS 104 Introduction to Nonlinear Dynamics, Caltech, Spring 2005
5 -- EE 20 Introduction to Analog Electronics, Caltech, Fall 1998
4 -- EE 90 Project in Electrical Engineering, Caltech, Spring 1999
3 -- Chem 301abc Organic Chemistry, Cal State LA, 2003-2004 academic year
2 -- ACM 95abc Complex Analysis, Ordinary & Partial Differential Equations, Caltech 2000-2001 academic year

And the #1 class is... CS/EE 5x Introduction to Microprocessor Designing at Caltech, Fall 1998 and Winter 1999

What the hell... I'm feeling pretty flustered so I'll add my top 10 classes as well:

Close contenders (but no cigar): Advanced Plant Ecology (Cal State LA), APh 180 (Solid-State Physics, audited), General Chemistry (Contra Costa College), Basic Statistics & Probability (Contra Costa College)

10 -- APh 9 Introduction to Solid-State Physics, Caltech, Fall 1997
9 -- Lit ??? Creative Writing: The Imaginary, Caltech, Spring 2000
8 -- Geog 468 Computer Cartography, Cal State LA, Fall 2003
7 -- Env/Ge ??? Biogeochemical Seminar, Caltech, Fall 2002 (audited)
5 (tied) -- Bio 408 -- Advanced Biometrics, Cal State LA, Winter 2004
(tied) -- Bio 454 -- Biological Modelling, Cal State LA, Winter 2005
4 -- Env/Ge 148b Biogeochemical Cycles, Caltech, Winter 2001
3 -- Env/Ge 148c Terrestrial Systems Studies, Caltech, Spring 1999
2 -- Geog 482 Multivariate Statistics, Cal State La, Spring 2003

And the #1 winner is... Geog 560 Multivariate Statistical Seminar, Cal State LA, Spring 2004

Ok back to work!

Oh, Microwave Mishap!

So I used to make fun of this one friend of mine because apparently, before I met him, he had microwaved some raw hamburger meat and then ate it... all without ill effect. Now it's my turn to have a microwave oven story of my own.

It all started when I got up insanely early this morning to finish up a nonlinear dynamics homework set, having gone to sleep a bit early after a grueling day at school. I got really hungry, so I thought pasta would be a great idea and wanting to be time-efficient, I decided that it would be much less time-consuming to use the microwave. I did my usual thing of putting seasonings, dried pasta, water, and salt into a tupperware container. Once I dumped the combination into the nuker, I turned the dial some random distance before I went back to struggling with Poincare-Bendixson theorem for proving the existence of a closed-orbit solution. I was also having some fun trying to work on trying to construct Liupanov functions, which would rule out the existence of a closed-orbit solution. After all, this problem set was due in the early afternoon and even though I had a very good start, I still had a lot of work. So, while I finally began to understand Poincare-Bendixson, the stench of burning plastic assaulted my nostrils. I ran to the microwave and when I opened it, white vapours came pouring out of the nuker, as did the aroma of burning plastic and elemental carbon. In the centre of the microwave was a blackened mass that was supposed to be my breakfast and a puddle of molten plastic with some yellow stains.

Not sure what to do, I opened up all of my windows to get the smell out, but it was too late. Now, 12 hours later, my apartment still smells like burning plastic. Not only that, but my laptop computer and harp also stink even though I did evacuate the apartment to protect my poor, fragile respiratory system. I must've inhaled enough toxic fumes to take a few years off my life expectancy, but the scary part is... it's probably no more dangerous than Los Angeles air anyway!

So yeah, that was my adventure of the day. The lesson of the day: Be aware of how long stuff is in the microwave and if there's tupperware or other plastic involved, never use full power!

Other lesson: When tired and/or addled from too many hours of studying, just get some fresh fruit or veggies!

'Twas the night before the conference

So I'm sitting before my computer trying to finish up my poster for a conference presentation, but I'm not feeling particularly motivated. I'm also supposed to be working on this map for vegetation characterisation so we can start doing this baseline study for Sciurus griseus populations... but again, I'm not feeling particularly motivated. I think I had too much caffeine earlier today and I think listening to the soundtrack for Tonari no Totoro several times in a row has a funny effect on the brain too.

Ok now that I've gotten that out of my system, I'm going to finish up that poster which pretty much describes my life for the next year or so... More on that later when my brain isn't so damaged...

Oh one last thought before I go -- why is it that cell phones always ring right when I can't get to it within the time alotted?