The Epicycle

Making Ambigrams

2009-05-03T22:48:00.006-05:00

Ambigrams are hot. They've been around forever as a curiosity but are catching on in logos and type now because…I don't know – everything else has been done? Check out this gallery at wired.

A web-search on ambigrams will turn up a bunch of tattoo sites. Something about their symmetry and mystical puzzling quality makes people want to imprint it on themselves. Of course, does such a tattoo require you to prove to your audience that it's the same upside-down? Make sure you can still do a head-stand before committing to that tattoo.

I wanted to try making one but was hoping to leverage some computer technique to flip it for me, so I wouldn't have to do it all by hand. A search for ambigram software seems to pivot around one amazing proprietary tattoo software. Quite clever, but the cost and legal issues were daunting. Plus the gothic or script fonts that it builds on wouldn't let me design a high-tech software logo. It's clear after looking at just a handful of ambigrams that the medieval and scripting fonts let you add frills that your eye can choose to ignore or not. Kinda like captchas.

At any rate, I wanted to play with making them on my tablet PC, so I built on a some example code, and came up with a simple IE toy: AmbigramMaker.xaml. You can use your mouse but it's better with a tablet pen since it lets you erase and apply pressure-sensitive marks. When you open it, you can only draw on the left-hand-side. But with a little practice and help from this tutorial you can make one. Don't kill a lot of time with this – there's no save feature. The following was created with a "print screen." If you're interested in collaborating in improving this Silverlight-powered applet, please contact me. I have more ideas but little time.

So the following is a poor attempt to make an ambigram for the title of this blog. More time and more artistic skill does pay off.

Things We Learned on Square Day

2009-04-26T10:38:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was squareday - for everybody, but it meant more to me. Yesterday was 4/25/09 – all square numbers. In a given century this'll happen 135 days out of 36,525 about 1 in 250 days - so not that big of a deal. But for me it marked my 36^th birthday – also a square number. This was the only day in my life when this will happen. In fact, for around 1 in 400 people this will only happen once. For everyone else it will never happen. Of course, if you were born on one of the 15 square-days in '00 you should get at nine of these, maybe ten if you don't smoke!
Oh, your birthday is all primes! Congrats. When will the special birthday come for you when your age and the year are both primes? Never. Sorry, if you were born in an odd-numbered year, you'll turn an even age in odd years (primes must be odd), and an odd (potentially prime) age in even years.
What do you call the special class of numbers that individually are the difference between two consecutive square numbers? Let's see. Let the first consecutive number be x and the second (x + 1). The difference in the squares is (x + 1)^2 – x^2 = y. Where y is one of the special class of numbers. Well, if you remember your FOIL method, y = 2x + 1. In order to ensure that both x and y are integers, the only stipulation is that y be an odd number. That's it. All odd numbers can be created by the difference of two consecutive squares.
Trying to find a square-root without a calculator? Check this out this page. http://www.homeschoolmath.net/teaching/square-root-algorithm.php
So, some numbers have integer square roots (4, 25, 9, 36) but most have non-integer irrational number square roots. Is it possible to have a non-integer rational square root? I don't think so. Coming back to the FOIL method, we could write an equation like: (a + x/y)* (a + x/y) = P. All of which are integers. Where a^2 < P (P is the number we're taking the square root of); and x<y. A little manipulation gets us to:
(P – a^2) = 2x/y + x^2/y^2
with a little more manipulation we can get to 2xy + x^2 = Ky^2,
Where K is some integer multiplier.
Solving for x: x = y±√(4*y^2+4*K*y^2) = y ± 2*y*√(2*K)
x = y(1 + 2√2K).
Since √2 (square-root of 2) is irrational, no integer values of x,y or K will produce a rational number.

The Last Great Prog Album

2009-02-01T16:26:00.003-06:00

Progressive Rock was dead by 1990. It was a nerd genre that defined my musical palette from ‘83 to ‘93 and it’s pomp and seriousness lead to its self-destructive in these last 2 decades. The 1989 release of Season’s End by Marillion tries really hard to save the genre. It’s a forgotten masterpiece of music that really sounds awful. I want to encourage you to hear it, but I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me. Let me explain.
The guitar and synth sounds are the finest 80’s cheese. The singer tries to sound like Michael Bolton but I fear his leather pants are too tight and his voice strains in unpleasant ways. But! But, the bass and drums are unbelievably tight. The music is so interesting. The lyrics are fatal – covering topics like global warming and abusive women’s prisons. And, the mix is even more fatal…in a glorious high-tech 80’s kinda way.
You will want to cringe but if you give yourself over to it, it’s quite a ride. This was the first album with a new singer. Can established bands really swap out the singer? Well, we see-hear the remaining members struggling with this question, but they work really hard at it, and in the end come up feeling pretty good about the result. The album cover reminds me of the music. It tries really hard but WTF?
Here are some highlights:
the last half of “Easter”. The guitar solo and orchestration around it are stunning. When the group drops down into a 5/4 celebration groove – it’s goose-bump inducing.
the title track it about global warming. You just might buy a hybrid afterwards - and this was in 1989.
Feeling righteous and need a soundtrack? songs like Uninvited Guest and “King of Sunset Town” will have you punching the air with pleasurable indignation. The bass and drums stabs are off-beat, skillful, and memorable.
The final track, “The Space…” with its haunting synth-strings is what synth-strings were made for.
Please listen to the whole album on headphones because a) the depth of the mix should be listened to loud to be appreciated, and b) you don’t want people to hear you listening to this pompous 80’s event. If they do hear it, tell them you were listtening to it for historical reasons: it’s 20 years old, and it’s the last great progressive rock album.

A New Way to Tell Time

2008-11-11T22:04:00.004-06:00

Long ago, when I started this blog, I wanted to release some new clock designs. I was motivated by the TokyoFlash approaches, and wanted to come up with some based on epicyclic movement. Why would one bother? Longer ago, I had difficulty reading an 'analog' clock. I was a child of the digital age, and preferred to the red blocky LEDs that simply spelled it out. I still find the hour and minute hand confusing sometime – squinting across the room – it's easy to confuse the two hands.

So, in this first installment, I show the simplest design. It's so simple that it may be deceiving how to read it. There is no hour hand. Instead the face of the clock moves to follow the minute hand. The minute hand is the most important anyway, right. Chances are when you look at a clock, you already know the hour, and you simply want to know the minute. In this clock (yes, I realize I need a better design – any offers?), the hour is indicated by the last number the minute hand passed. Get it? You can also download a Vista Gadget of this clock (remove the .zip from the end when you save), but it requires you to also install the following XAML extension: Windows Sidebar Styler.

Finally, I really would like a second hand to show some movement so that you know that the clock is working. So, in this modification, I've added an outer dial to show the seconds. The dial moves backwards and the exact second is indicated by the minute hand as well. In this way, your eyes need only go to where the minute hand is pointing to determine hour, minute, and second. Here's the Vista Gadget for this one (again remove the .zip from the end when you save) (don't forget the sidebar styler extension as well).

An Oversight in George F. Will’s Corporate Cosmology

2008-09-24T21:46:00.001-05:00

There are only a few magazines I read so thoroughly that I run out of articles before the replacement shows up on the newsstand, but Newsweek is one of them. The last page alternately written by Anna Quindlen and George Will is a favorite. While Ms. Quindlen is a superior writer (I'd kill for that clarity and flow in writing), I usually find George Will's perspective refreshing and enlightnening.

However, this weeks foray into the interdependence of our economy as constrained by all other world economies misses the mark for me on one key issue. The anecdote of a wooden pencil being the product of four distinct parts that are based on raw material from four regions of the world is cute and awe-inspring, but it doesn't happen the way Will and the economists he endorses say it does. He states, "goods … result from innumerable human actions but not from any human design"

Really?! All the artifacts around us just happen out of "emergent behavior"? You are missing a very important player in this – the designers – both the engineers and the industrial. Without them, the pencil would not exist. Perhaps this isn't of interest to these pundits and economists, but we shouldn't forget that inventor spirit. It's what made this country great. Seriously, that sounds corny, but I'll go further and say it wasn't freedom of religion, or a "perfect" democracy, but the inventions that Americans bore. These inventions went on to change infrastructure, create jobs, and a quality of life beyond what is percievable by only examinig such economics. In the current crisis, we have shouldn't forget this. Plus a career inventing things would be pretty damn fulfilling.

My Dream PC is no more

2008-07-29T14:18:00.004-05:00

I've been permanently attached to my trusty tablet PC over the last few months, and have grown a bit impatient with its sluggishness. It's three years old, and I was interested in obtaining something more powerful. Here are my requirements:

WACOM pen compatible
More than 3 gigs of memory
DVD reader/writer
64-bit OS capable
At least 2.2 GHz
Less than $1500

I was happy to see it existed in Gateway's C-142XL. Gateway's tablet PCs have been underrated by review forums online. For some reason, Gateway has avoided the "tablet" tag and instead opted for "convertible"– perhaps this is a weight issue – but the result is that Gateway tablets fail to show up as competition for the Lenovos or Toshibas. At any rate after finally calling Gateway directly (1-800-GATEWAY will most likely redirect you to one of their preferred vendors), I found out the bad news. Gateway will no longer be making any tablet PCs. It appears that my dream machine was made in limited quantities this summer but it's no more.

There are two that come close:

HP Pavilion tx1420: lacks the speed and screen size of the once C-142XL

Fujitsu T4220: more expensive, slower, less memory than the once C-142XL

Stoichiometric Machines of the Future

2008-06-05T22:02:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to watching "The Inconvenient Truth." The next day the Wired magazine showed up with a special on cutting carbon. How could we have been stupid for so long? Well, the following equation is just so damn easy on this planet:

_C_nH_m + _O₂ = _CO₂ + _H₂O + energy.........................(1)

It's the combustion equation. We use it solely to produce the energy (Gibbs free energy) that comes out of the right hand side. You do this when you throw logs on your campfire, when you throw coal in your potbelly stove, and when you put globs of Texas Tea in your Horseless Carriage. It's even what happens in your lungs. All we wanted was the energy but when you examine the other terms you see the problem. The left side wants some hydrocarbon (with various m's and n's that produces dollars and wars in the Middle East) and the right side produces carbon dioxide – that's the gaseous carbon causing all the problems. If you want to get technical, there's a host of other chemical reactions that are also in there. Nothing we can do about the equation. It's not inherently evil. It's just that we've done it 10⁴⁰ times in the last 5000 years.

Therefore, what we need to do is create other machines that perform other chemical conversions to offset the problems this one has caused - and run those machines 24-7 to set things right. One of the more popular ideas is to fuel cells to create energy instead. This is done by:

_H₂ + _O₂ = _H₂O + energy .........................(2)
This is what futurists call the hydrogen economy. But where the heck are we going to get hydrogen in bulk quantities?

In order to do either of these energy producing equations when we want where we want, we should seek to build plants or devices that do the reverse. Unfortunately, doing the reverse will require energy. So these things will have to be solar powered. Somehow, we need to do this: energy + _CO₂ + substrate = _O₂ + carbon filled substrate.........................(3)

It seems a couple people have had similar ideas in recent years. Perhaps the best one is Nobel Prize winner Dr. G.A. Olah and the Methanol Institute approach to make methanol from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. But still, where do we get the hydrogen? The most tried and true way is simple electrolysis.
energy + 2*H₂O = O₂ + 2*H₂.........................(4)

That's just zapping water with electricity.

Anyway, my idea is to set up household machines. Machines for every rooftop in the nation (in the world), which just toil away at the latter two equations whenever the sun is shining. The hardest one is the third equation. But perhaps, we could use carbon nanotubes or the like with billions of activation centers to reach out and grab the carbon dioxide and add the carbon to itself. I don't know if it'll work. In the meantime, plant a tree. Plant life does the 3^rd equation one pretty well.

Comparing 70’s Jazz-Fusion Supergroups with Operating Systems

2008-05-30T12:51:00.002-05:00

Last night I saw Return to Forever in concert. The opening date of their first tour in 25 years. Their nervousness and the crowd's anticipation nearly stifled their astounding performance. But I must say, it was quite a thrill. Afterwards, I overheard fans fantasizing about seeing reunions of other jazz-fusion supergroups of that same era - Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Thinking of that triumvirate lead me to this most dorky of all analogies. Return to Forever is to Microsoft as Mahavishnu is to Mac as Weather Report is to Linux. Let me explain.

Return to Forever is the least rebellious (some would say least cool). Their products are often overly complex and that sometimes complicates the central goal. Some product features are added to great effect others not so much (Hello Again?).

Mahavishnu Orchestra on the other hand consistently put out lethally brilliant pieces that appealed to hip rockers. It was, however, ruled by an overcontrolling tyrant.

Finally, Weather Report started out with creations that were free. It had a huge roster of brilliant but forgettable players that didn't stick around for long. They had a slow evolution from eclectic pieces to more commercial stuff that, in the end, consistently missed opportunities to be truly innovative. And maybe Jaco is Google! Taking the group towards its cohesive peak and later breaking off to develop his own successful (and better) material.

Well that was fun, but I don't suppose we'll be hearing Celestial Terrestrial Commuters in an Itunes commercial anytime soon.

Repost: The Toughest Logic Puzzle

2008-05-17T09:57:00.007-05:00

This is a repost from two years ago. That post had become inundated with splogger comments, so I'm reposting it. I’ve taken the liberties (or perhaps you view it as an injustice if you are the original author) to rewrite a puzzle I once heard. I can find no reference to it online, so here goes.
Tale of the Diseased Monks
One Sunday evening after working in the fields, the secluded monks of the Kaetorsian order gathered for evening prayers. After the usual somber songs and pious prayers, the high priest said, “I have a grave announcement. It appears a horrible disease has fallen on our community this fine spring day. I know this because the disease results in a purple spot on your forehead, and I can see that some of you have this. From what I know of this most evil disease - you will remain unharmed for 14 days. After which, the disease will spread to others, and you will experience a most painful passing that may last months. If we are not careful, this disease will completely destroy our peaceful monastery. Therefore, I ask that those of you who have this spot to please remove yourself from our community immediately. I pray (for my sake!) that this matter will be resolved before these two weeks are over. Despite the fact that all of you have taken a vow of silence, and a vow of humility, and thus will not be able to inform one another of the forehead spot, and even though we lack mirrors and the lake is choppy and you are unable to see for yourself whether you have this spot, you are all trained highly in the ways of logic and will be able to deduce on your own whether or not you have become infected. In this way, we will carry on as we always have: working solitarily all morning and congregating here every evening to share in this holy life. Some of you would prefer that I simply point out those of you who are diseased and while I have not taken the vow of silence that you have taken, my vow of humility prevents me from calling attention to your dysfunctions. Good night”
The next few days passed as they always have. The monks that had been infected seemed as good natured as the others, and no one treated one another any differently. However, after more than a week, as the two week deadline approached, an air of nervousness crept in. The second Saturday after the high priest’s announcement was particularly tense. The next day marked the two week deadline before the disease was to spread again, and the diseased monks were still working and praying along side the healthy ones. After the congregation disbanded from the Saturday evening prayers, the monks returned to their private quarters. On Sunday, two weeks after the high priest announcement, all of the diseased monks were gone. Through their highly tuned logic skills, they were able to determine that they had been affected and sacrificed themselves for the good of the monastery.

How many monks were infected (the actual number, please)? And how did they determine it?

My only hint is the following. What would you notice if you were the only one infected?

The Newest, Most Unique Domino Game

2008-05-10T23:28:00.020-05:00

Dominid is a result of buying a set of dominoes and realizing how boring and skill-less domino games were. So, here is the first ever published instructions for the best new domino game of the 21^st century.

Dominid

Required: 28 regular dominoes (0 to 6) and 2 people
Objective: To have the lowest score after all dominoes have been played.

Like most domino games, the two players draw and add dominoes to a single structure of dominoes that takes form in the middle of the playing area. But as you can see from the figures, this shape can be built "up" as well as "out." It is for this reason that standard dominoes that are exactly twice as long as they are wide are necessary in order to stack correctly. Also, the big difference in Dominid is that players place dominoes side-by-side as opposed to end-to-end. In placing a domino, the only constraint is that it borders two numbers (see Fig. 1 and Fig. 5) – it doesn't have to be the same numbers. The issue is that one's score is determined (in part) by the distance between the placed domino and the one it borders. By distance, I am referring to the total difference in the numbers. So, for example, the last domino placed by a player in Figure 1 is the top one (2 6). Since this is adjacent to (2 5), then user score goes up one point (1 pt. = 2 – 2 + 6 – 5). And yes, this is always positive – that's why we call it a distance.	Figure 1: Unlike other domino games, the numbers don't have to match, but your scorce will depend on how different your "placed" domino is from its neighbors.
Next up. Building upwards. The next player drew the doublet (5 5). She wants to place it next to the 5 & 4 to minimize how much her score goes up. She can actually place this right on top of the 5 & 4 as is shown in Figure 2. Here it gets a tad more complicated. Determining the distance to 5 & 4 is only one option, since it is also next to 2 & 1 and (6 4). So, she could choose to make her distance 7 or 2 respectively. But, of course, since she wants to minimize her score it is compared to the 5 & 4 below. In this way, more options are available when building up than building to the side. But there is one constraint: a domino cannot be placed directly over another. For example, this (5 5) domino could not be placed on top of the (6 4) in the first and second figures. You can only build up by straddling two other dominos that are at the same height.	Figure 2: Building on Figure 1, a 5-doublet is placed on top of the (5 4).
That's the easy part. Now here comes the real strategic element. One player is assigned the odd numbers (1, 3, 5) and the other is assigned the even numbers (2, 4, 6). At the end of the game, the evens player can subtract off from their score any contiguous cluster of same even numbers, so long as that cluster is greater than 3. An example? Good idea. In Figure 3, all dominoes have been played. The evens-player current has 17 but since there is a cluster of three 4's and three 6's, the end score is 17 – 3 – 3 = 11. The odd player ends with a 15, and he also has two clusters of three: the row of 5's and the 1's to the right. His score is 9. Hence, "odd" wins since 9 is lower than 11. A cluster of three pieces is worth three points, a cluster of four is worth four, five is worth five, etc. A cluster of two (or one) is not worth any points. Okay, that the gist of it. Let me start over with a more detailed description.	Figure 3: A final configuration shows that "even" has 2 contiguous clusters of three numbers (4 and 6), and "odd" has two clusters (1 and 5).
Start: All pieces are placed face down on the table and shuffled (moved about randomly). Both players simultaneously draw a piece from the pile and place it face up (as in Figure 4). Add the total of each piece. The player with the higher value goes first. If the two tiles have the same total (e.g. (4 0) and (1 3)) than the player with the highest single value wins (4 0). The player with the losing domino must arrange the two side by side in the center of the table while the winning player draws three dominoes to start their hand. Then, the losing player draws their 3 dominoes. The winning player plays his first domino and then declares whether he want odds or evens. Note, this doesn't change what you dominoes you play. Even though, you declare evens you will likely be forced to play many odds, since drawing new dominoes is a random affair. However, since your score in the end will depend on the clusters of the numbers you declared in the beginning, you will find yourself playing different strategies with these pieces. After each placement of a domino, draw a new one so that you always have 3 dominoes in your hand. It's best to keep them a secret from the other player, otherwise they can use this knowledge against you. Players take turns until all dominoes are played. In the last few rounds, the draw pile will be empty so your hand will dwindle from 3 to 2 to 1 final piece. There will be countless places to play a piece at any given turn. The only limitation is that your pieces must border two other pieces and cannot completely cover another piece. Figure 5 illustrates these two forbidden cases. With each turn, players should announce their new score. You can think of the scoring like golf. You want to have the lowest score, so each move will cost you some "strokes" depending on how different your placed piece is from those around it. If your piece stacks on top of others, remember - you can take whatever pair of neighbors leads to the lowest score (as in the example of Figures 1 and 2). But it must be a neighboring pair - not one number to the left for the top digit and one to the right for the bottom digit. Okay, so that's it for basic game play. In terms of strategy, that's a whole other matter. You want to try to connect your numbers in clusters while you play so that at the end, you can take off a big chunk of points. You can also strive to cover your opponent's numbers to break up his clusters. Since you can't control what dominoes end up in your hand, you will often be playing odds even though you're trying to build even clusters. You will also learn that doublets take on a particular advantage in this game. If possible, hold onto those until the end. This is the first attempt to write up these instructions, so feel free to post your questions.	Figure 4: First two pieces of a new game are simultaneously drawn by the two players.
	(a) (b) Figure 5: The only types of moves that are not allowed are (a) placing a piece completely over another, or (b) not being along side two other numbers.

Fifteen Years Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away

2008-04-27T21:35:00.006-05:00

I've finally decided to restart my blog after one and a half years with a bit of nostalgia from exactly* one and a half decades ago. But I don't want to dwell on old friends and inside jokes. Instead, I want to tell you, oh faceless reader, about a neat game we invented.
That year, I was the president of one of the nerdiest organizations at one of the nerdiest universities in the country that focused its springtime energies on one of the nerdiest movies ever made.

Spring is celebrated with a campus-wide festival where various groups make "booths" – essentially elaborate carnival games. We had a paltry budget in comparison to many fraternities, etc. and were ridiculed at first by our tiny matte-black one car garage. Fortunately, the org's VP was a great artist and went through a box or two of pastels on an amazing mural (replete with S&M Jabba-slave Leia, of course.)

Alone that might have been enough, but our "game" involved a two-part toss. Most carni-games, as you can imagine, are single toss events: knock over, shoot down, toss ring, etc. Ours was based on first throwing the grappling hook – a magnet at a metal target. Attached with a generous four-five feet of twine were some well-worn action figures from our childhood. Based on the position of your grappling hook – which if you were careful you could slide about on the metal panel (careful not to pull too hard or it'd come off) – you then swung your figures in hopes of getting them through a hole.
1. for A New Hope (the 1^st one): this mimicked the escape of Luke and Leia from the stormtroopers.
2. for Empire: this mimicked Luke's takedown of an AT-AT.
3. and for Jedi: a fictitious furry romp of Chewy and an ewok (yes, I know – bit of a stretch).
Each of these increased in complexity. The final one required swinging out around a tree. It was all pretty rickety but oh-so clever. Throwing the magnet grappling hook was easy and inconsequential. But when it came to trusting the hook's position and letting the action figures swing away, player's clutched the pieces with apprehension pondering (often fruitless) strategies. And, when Luke smacked the pegboard legs of the AT-AT, you couldn't help but guffaw. You should make this!

* Well, I started this two weeks ago, so by the post date, this is no longer exactly.

Merging Energies

2006-10-05T21:46:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about hybridding. A hybrid, in the modem context, is something that will combine multiple energy sources to perform a single function. Two things about this are difficult. First, the device must be fairly intelligent to manage the 2 sources. Simply, plug it in and close the switch will no longer suffice. To totally geek-out, this requires MI MO (multiple input, multiple output) nonlinear controls. But on a more practical level it requires things (components) that can actually merge energy. Is that hard? For hydraulics, pneumatics, and electricity it's a mere T-junction, but how to do it more mechanically? Well, turns out the answer is in the blog title. That clever planetary gear train, or the epicyclic gear train is the best way to do this. I'm wondering how many patents Toyota and others have filed on appropriating this old (albeit wonderful) technology.

Timing is a Thrill

2006-09-15T09:11:00.000-05:00

There is an intense immediacy in life when things happen quickly, unexpectedly-something that I hope I can always experience. And what exactly is spawning this Hallmark-grade drivel? Three things:

I had a jam with my band the other day that I’ve been listening to a lot on a recent trip back east. Here it is in all its nakedness. Often when we get together we just launch into a jam like this. Usually it takes a while to hit a stride, but in this we really fell into some energetic rhythms quickly. What a thrill!
I just made a connecting flight through Cleveland just now in which I felt it necessary to sprint between gates. I was glad to find that my flight home hadn’t left without me. Nor did it leave without the 10 other people who leisurely boarded on after me. Ah well, timing not well spent perhaps? I quietly eliminated my private shame by relishing in the rare situation in which one is allowed to run wildly in a public place-where one is pitied and cheered on as opposed to scorned. What a thrill too!
I think Concentric finally has a gig again –after more than a year. We we’ve been ready for some time but I’ve been lazy about booking one. It has happened unexpectedly and with no effort on my part. Another thrilling occasion!

5ive Things I know to be true, but have a hard time convincing others

2006-08-24T12:07:00.000-05:00

I don’t read many blogs and so I really don’t have much to inspire me on that end. But, one of my favorite is 5ives a humor blog by Merlin Mann who is, dare I say, a fellow Web.2.0 renaissance man. Whatever. I found myself having a number of conversations over the last few days that lead me to compile this (rather unfunny) top five list of my own. Here goes: 5ive things I know to be true, but have a hard time convincing others.

1. C# is the best programming language.

2. Lefties should play right-handed guitar, and righties, left-handed guitar. Why? because the hard part is fretting the notes not “starting” the note. Keep it strung upside-down too – it looks cool and free you from all the hackneyed riff patterns

3. When moving to a new home, people tend to take a long time to unbox themselves and feel guilty about it. The best approach is to open all the cardboard boxes and dump out the contents on the floor. Remove the cardboard! It is a bureaucratic hurdle to your need to get settled.

4. Phil Collins established himself as one of the best drummers of all time with Moroccan Roll.

5. We should teach base-12 (dozenal as opposed to decimal) to grade schoolers – it is superior to base-10 in every way.

iTunes Purchase

2006-08-22T21:39:00.001-05:00

I uncreatively use Microsoft and Yahoo! for nearly everything I do. It’s not that I don’t see the superiority of Google or Macintosh it just I prefer to go with what's popular and easy for these things. I see now that when it comes to music, I’ve lost out. I totally dig the new WiMP (version 11 beta), and have bought a bit of music from MSN and MusicMatch. I even helped start a business that sells local wma files as opposed to the aac and m4p files that Macs use, but I eventually had to install iTunes and use their store to make the following purchases. So sad to see that some labels or musicians only want to sell on iTunes and not these stores or the local online route. Ah well. Since I wasn’t able to bring myself to completely switch to iTunes, I immediately burned my purchases to music-CD in order to re-rip them to mp3PRO (my preferred unlocked format). I saw the CDs in a traditional CD store for some $18 or so, but decided I rather forego the fancy artwork for the downloads (which cost less than $10). So here’s what I bought.

“People People Music Music” by Groove Collective : The sixth full CD by perhaps my favorite band of the last 10 years – ever since their release of “We the People”. The music produced by the band (which despite their name is relatively cohesive over the 6 albums – very few member changes for a group of studio-grade jazzers of NYC) continues to fly under the radar of both critic and popular acclaim. That’s too bad. ‘Tis especially a shame that jazz-fans and jazz-critics are not able to appreciate the music, but maybe now that they are on Savoy, things will change. Granted the music is fun, but it also has its complexities. This album shows the band engaging in melodic and harmonic themes extending well beyond 8 bars, and solos that are truly stirring. The album lacks some of the rhythmic complexities we heard on Dance of the Drunken Master, but all in all a rich set of new jazz material. By the way, I am completely comfortable calling this jazz even though purists will be more apt to call it funk or sugar-free jazz.

“Observing Systems” by Tied and Tickled Trio : The second album I bought from iTunes was one I’ve been pining for for years now – but well worth the wait. This is a German band that makes a darker shade of acid-jazz than Groove Collective. What’s gone is the danceable jam-band tendencies, but what replaces it is the brooding glitchy trip-hop underpinnings that reek of euro-trash sophistication. Here is finally a group which I can say is closest to what I try to do in my music. Of course, what we struggle to do with four people, they manage to pull off with 3?! My guess is that trio doesn’t translate to a three-person band in this case. At any rate, this is a hard album to find in the US – but represents (along with the Groove Collective CD) some truly innovative jazz IMHO.

Puzzle: Tale of the Eccentric Vintner

2006-08-02T09:17:00.000-05:00

The following is my adaptation of a puzzle offered by an old friend. The original is a little too bawdy so I’ve recast it…

This one eccentric winemaker believes the secret to great drink is to have the grapes squashed by the feet of dancing maidens. He has arranged for one on Saturday and another for Sunday. Given modern health regulations the dancers are required to wear booties, but the vintner is unwilling to spend much money on such disposable footwear. Given that each dancer will be required to squash both chardonnay and cabernet grapes which cannot contaminate each other, and that the dancers are unwilling to wear booties worn by one another – What’s the least number of pairs of booties that the vintner needs to buy? And what procedure is necessary to ensure that the dancers’ feet won’t have to share booties and that the two kinds of grapes do not contact each other.

Hint: 1) it’s fewer than you think, 2) no it’s not 3 pairs, and 3) one can wear booties over other booties.

my big software accomplishment

2006-07-31T16:50:00.001-05:00

I set myself – what appeared to be – a very generous deadline about 5 months ago to finish a piece of software I was writing in time to show at a conference. The conference was just last week and so the weeks leading up to it were busy with final touches to the code and its complimentary website.
The website is http://www.graphsynth.com. The software that one can download from that site is entitled GraphSynth and its snapshot is shown here. I believe that the software is quite revolutionary but it will be most inscrutable to many of you. In a previous post, I talked about my interest in mathematical graphs to not only simplify complex things in life but also to design or create new complex things. GraphSynth is designed to do just that. It implements various graph building functions to allow one to make a set of rules to define a creative domain, be it, music, art, engineering design, or architecture.
At any rate, the software is available publicly to anyone interested. There’s quite a bit of theory behind it, and making rules takes time. I have many other things going on in life, and this was quite an enjoyable distraction – back to making music and trying to snag more research money.

Gratuitous Use of Packaging

2006-07-18T16:28:00.001-05:00

I know I haven’t written an entry in a while, and this short one really doesn’t satisfy, but here goes.
This is a picture of 3 packages that arrived at our house last week. Each contained exactly one small item (the light green packages). All are from the same company and yet each uses a different packaging material.
Why weren’t they shipped in the same package?
Why were such huge boxes used? All three could have been shipped in the same padded envelope. Technically, we got a good deal on the shipping and handling and the company lost out. But in the end, we all lose. That sounds cheesy, I know, but the point is being environmentally minded might actually be inline with aspects of technological advances and economic improvement in as many cases as it challenges these ideas.

A Definitive and Graphical Guide to Human Energy/Power

2006-06-30T12:24:00.001-05:00

I’ve been talking on and off about how we don’t use our own human energy anymore – everything is electric or hydrocarbon powered. In the spirit of hybridding, it’d be nice to harness human power where appropriate. There are better studies of this topic than what I’m about to write, but this one is compact and pretty!(?) When I bicycle (bicycles are a great way to get our energy out – see my prev. blogs: 1, 2, 3). I can push the pedals with about 200 pounds of force (~900 N), I can bike continuously for 30 min. (1800 sec), and I can move my feet about 10 rev per second (10 m/s). If I plot these limits in a figure (Figure 1). I can multiply the three values together to get an energy output. I can provide 4.5 kWH! my house eats 15 kWH a day – I could reduce my electric bill by a third.

Not quite. It’d be impossible to do all three at once. For one reason, that’s almost 4000 (nutritional) calories. I only take in half that in a whole day. In any half hour exercise session, one would like expend up to 500 calories. That scoops out a major portion of our graph (see Figure 2).

Finally, just like an electric motor’s Torque-Speed curve, I wouldn’t be able to provide the max force at the max speed. Let’s assume a linear relationship between max force and max speed. As you see in Figure 3, this removes a triangle off of the back wall. That backwall (force x speed) is actually power in watts – more on this in a moment. Furthermore, the floor of the plot is distance (speed x time). You have to pace yourself, right? So, I wouldn’t be able to sprint for the full 30 minutes. Let’s carve out unreasonable distances as well. Lastly, the left plane of the figure is momentum (force x time). This is the least physically intuitive of the six, but we can guess that one would be able to provide the max force for the full 30 min. So, we carve out some of that too. The result is a an plot that shows what one can provide – roughly a maximum at that 500 calories, or ½ a kWH – and rest assured, you’ll be pooped after that.

Many tasks though have a power requirement. Power is not conserved, though. And you can store energy slowly (low power input) and expend quickly (high power, but over short time). If we look at the power vs. time curve we can see what one could provide with the view provide in Figure 3. This is shown in the final figure (Figure 4) and indicates that my assessment is a little on the high side. But it’s something like 1 kW for 15 minutes that we grown adults are good for.
That’s not too bad is it? One can probably do quite a bit with that.
(P.S. all these graphs were made in the new Microsoft excel 2007 beta version)

Fantastic Island Game

2006-06-24T17:25:00.001-05:00

Here's another thing, I couldn't find anything about online. It's a little puzzle called the Fantastic Island Game - obviously some mangled translation from Chinese, but it's no simple or cheap puzzle. The peices have a nice feel and a lot of thought has been put into its design.
As you can see from the pics, you get 7 pieces (ala Tetris) that can be assembled into, get this, 124 different simplex pyramids (like the one I solved at the bottom). The mind's activity during this 'puzzling' is quite refreshing to me. I know a little bit about how puzzles can be solved computationally, so sometimes I get bored with such things because I know the best way to solve some puzzles is to follow a rote set of actions. But, in general, we need to keep pushing ourselves to solve such puzzles if we wanna keep our wits about us (what I mean is, as we get older, we need to exercise that ol' wetware).
Part of the freshness offered by this puzzle, is the 3-nature that the pieces congeal in. From my previous posts, one can see my fascination with ternary systems, and this is a great example. As you build the pyramid, pieces aren't to the left/right of or above/below one another (as in the binary way of things we usually consider) but the interactions are harder to define.

Anyway, a lot of fun and getting good at this is good for ya - my humble opinion.

a random walk

2006-06-19T17:05:00.000-05:00

In some of the computational research I do, one often talks about taking a “random walk through the space.” This is to get a feel of how messy a design problem is, or how much things changed by making the same size small changes.To me (and probably no one else), there’s an interesting tie-in with music. I’ve been taking bass lessons again and working with a teacher on walking bass lines. In jazz the bass players have adopted this walking thing – taking small steps to transition between chords in a song. It takes some talent to choose notes that are not completely obvious and yet not completely random. One can’t be too interesting otherwise it’ll distract from the melodic, and not too boring otherwise the whole tune will suffer.

Looking at design and the decisions we make in design, I can see an analogy. In engineering, we don’t always want the most creative solution (especially if there’s no precedent that it’ll work or if you have to go to great lengths to make it by retooling your manufacturing), and we don’t want something to boring or predictable (else no one will buy it, and we won’t be truly innovative).

Don’t worry about me. This depresses me a little as well. I’d like to think we are always best with the crazy ideas even if it means no one else will understand :).

an uncomfortable truth about air power

2006-06-08T12:02:00.001-05:00

In my last post, I wrote about a mythical approach to transportation - one that relies on charged air. I still very much like this idea, but there are two big problems with it to be frank:

1) Pressured air (pneumatics) is much more dangerous than pressured liquid (hydraulics) – i.e. things can explode.
2) The control system for using compressed air as an energy storage medium is difficult to design.

The latter is going to be a big challenge for my air-powered bike idea. This is because as you pedal the bike and charge up your pressurized air tank that will be used to drive the wheel(s), the pedaling will constantly get harder and harder. One will require some gearing that will hopefully shift for you so that you can keep pedaling with a fairly even force imposed. Here’s a simple two-gear idea. It doesn’t require pedaling in the traditional sense, but rather an up and down motion like a stair-climber. The mechanism would require the shifting to simply lock one of the cylinders (while unlocking the other).

Air Power

2006-06-01T16:51:00.001-05:00

Rarely do internet searches disappoint. But yesterday, I was disappointed twice by two related searches. I overheard two colleagues of mine talking about a vehicle, car if you will, that can transverse the continental US on a single tank of compressed air. This turned up nothing. Perhaps they were sharing a joke and I was naïve to the punchline. Ahh well. At any result, I did find an air-powered car that reportedly can travel 185 miles.

This relates back to a previous post I made about the nature of energy. Vehicles are particularly tricky because of what I called the discrepancy in space (i.e. they need to be portable). A windmill or a nuclear reactor are hardly portable, are they. And countless alternatives fail to meet the demands (battery powered car?).

I’m also a big fan of bicycles. Not that I’m much of a star on a bike, but I love the fact that it has long evolved as an efficient way to get energy out of humans. So, I was really excited to read in Wired magazine about an air-powered bicycle with a picture of what I thought was one. Again an internet search of air-powered bicycle didn’t get me to what I thought was a bike driven by human generated air-power. But rather, like the car, one charged by more conventional means.

Why I am disappointed about this. Well, energy and power are not the same. Energy is conserved, not power. We humans can’t produce a whole lot of power, but energy we get a lot of, some more than we need. We tend not to use the kilocalories we store up as soon as we’d like. In fact, FDA says you take in 2000 calories (kcal) a day. With a good workout, you can expend a quarter of that, or about 0.6 kilowatt-hours. So, the instructables site let me down with my future air powered bike. But poking around that sight I also saw someone state how it’d be impossible to charge a 2HP air tank. That’s just not true. One person may not be able to create that much power. But that’s the great thing, we don’t store power, we store energy! Air is an untapped storage media of excess energy.

Sooo, the bike I wanted to see (which I guess I’ll have to design someday) uses your pedaling to store energy in the bike and outputs to the wheels when you want and at what rate (i.e. what power).

singing in my sleep

2006-05-24T22:12:00.000-05:00

If you pin the label songwriter to your list of interests/avocations, you may have been blessed or plagued by a similar phenomenon. It usually only happens to me when I'm low stress, getting a lot of exercise and thus sleeping alot. Now that summer's on the way, my job is a little lower stress and I have more time to exercise and hence dream music. I've had one or two instances in the last year that were enough to rouse me out of bed and roughly record the two concepts.
Here they are:
Dream 1: June 3rd, 3am 2005
Dream 2: April 30th, 5am 2006
What do these have in common? well, for one they're both difficult to 'count'. They are roughly in 4/4 but they repeat in the middle of the phrase. This brings up an interesting point about music. Most of what we hear is in 4/4 and our conscious state is often to create music in this time. But when the semi-conscious takes over, one can be free of the monotonity of common music. pretty cool.

Bicycle Evolution

2006-05-19T08:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I spent about 90 minutes in a local bike shop testing some new road bikes. My first reaction was how astonishing bikes have evolved in the last six years since I last bought one. But now in retrospect, I've changed that view. Lookit, no machine requires as much physical human energy and makes such efficient use of it as the bicycle. Exercise equipment will gladly accept your energy but it does little with it - rarely does it even use this to power it's 5-volt intelligence. So I believe we are extremely sensitive to the slight advances in bicycle design since WE are so intimately tied to the energy system.
For example, those funny little shoes you see on those skinny guys clicking about the coffee shop - do you need those to do any serious biking these days? The reason they developed was because most people bike in sneakers that have evolved to absorb (get rid of) the energy transfer to your foot from all that pounding the pavement. The bicycle shoe developed as a reaction in recent years because you want to maximize your energy delivered to the pedals - so your sneakers are working against you here!
Unlike the automobile, efficiency in cycling is directly in-line with speed and racing. As a result, all the design activities in cycling have been towards that single goal: make it more efficient since efficiency is speed. In automotives, this is clearly not the case. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the engineering design that went into Formula-One racing actually help us all have more efficient cars ! (there problaby is a small tie-in but I can't see it now)

Unfortunately, making the cycle more efficient introduces various contradictory sub-goals: make it lighter vs. make it stiffer, or make it comfy vs. make it fast. Furthermore, since buying a bike is like buying a car (a mode of transportation) but also like buying clothing (many complex interfaces with the human body) cycle manufacturers can make the slightest change in a design that seems, from our perspective to seem like a real technological leap. The danger in all this is that the ignorant consumer (even one who hasn't gone in a bike-shop for 6 years) can often be tricked into Formula-One spec'd racing bikes!

Magic Number 3

2006-05-09T17:02:00.001-05:00

On this day 5/9/06, I want to discuss the most underrated number, the number 3. Perhaps our nature is to think of the world as in base-10 and base-2 for some strange psychological or biological reasons (10 fingers, and the bi-symmetry of ourselves, left-vs.-right). But through a series of posts I want to talk about base-3, and I'm not the only one. In a wonderfully readable article in American Scientist, the author shows the following graph that indicates that base-3 is optimal! What does that mean? Well, it means that we should be striving to make a computer that runs on Base-3 instead of Base-2. Not only is base-3 best for us (in terms of least headache in writing down numbers and doing simple math on them - yes, easier than our base-10 that we've spent a life time studying), but it also could make computers run much faster and more efficiently.

Here's a great puzzle related to this base-3 business:
"You are given 12 balls and one of them has a weight defect - either heavier or lighter. We don't know which one it is. You are allowed to use a balance pan three times to find the defective ball. What process should you follow?"click here for the answer.

more on this base-3 stuff later...

Flaming Lips - At War with the Mystics - Review

2006-05-08T17:14:00.000-05:00

I was excited to buy the latest Flaming Lips
music (I'm almost exclusively buying my music online these days - my favorite site is Musicmatch - both for its prices and its diversity). Something about the previous release, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, really grabbed me and I wanted more. Given the reviews of War with the Mystics, I was sure that I would see it similar. After a few weeks of listening, I have to say it's not as magical as I hoped.
The Flaming Lips has always been a band that is pivoted on humor, which I think is great. But the more they've veered towards progressive-rock the harder it is to make this work. I was a big prog-rock fan for the longest time - listening to music made in the early 70's. As I became a musician as a teenager, I thought it'd be fun to write and play such music. But, alas other influences pulled me more towards jazz. At any rate, I've realized that playing truly progressive rock or the more specific and stilted prog-rock is more than just sci-fi synth sounds and fantastical titles. Here is a band trying to make a prog-rock album and failing to do so, unlike Radiohead's Hail to the Theif or Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot which are progressive although the both bands would hate to be labeled that way. Yoshimi... was successful at combining both the Flaming Lips usual campiness with truly complex and beautiful music. That album also had more warmth partly due to the smooth bass sounds that appear to be missing on Mystics. They seem to have maintained an edginess on Yoshimi that, like the previously listed bands (Radiohead and Wilco), make it hard to pin the prog-rock label on - even though they deserve it.

Case in point, the title track on Yoshimi (tracks 3 and 4) and ripe with humor and ol'fashioned r'n'r rebellion that ties them to their "she don't use jelly" roots. In comparison on Mystics, tracks like "Free Radicals" builds up an all too-polished spoof of 90's Prince. It's hard to believe the track clocks in at only 3:40 since the simple gtr-riff gets old real quick. The vocals on the album are delivered in the same charming, thin, unassuming Coyne style that pulled our heartstring on "Waitin' for Superman" but somehow there's just too much being said in this album to get the same affect. I don't have the best ear, but the vocals on "Haven't Got a Clue" are simply not in tune. Don't get me wrong - I agree with the political message of the CD, but I was expecting more from the music.

design: part art, part art, part science

2006-05-01T19:30:00.000-05:00

I was working with a student today who was writing a paper on whether
design (specifically engineering design) is part art or part science. In
a way, this phrase we use to describe something as an art more than a
science is really simply a colloquialism - and perhaps shouldn't be the
basis for a rigorous study. But, the student is very sharp and really
went into a lot of varied texts to discern an answer.
In the end, I was impressed with his study with the exception of how
"art" is used. When we describe something as an art more than a science,
we mean that it has an intangible element that defies an easy
explanation or way to instruct others. Design is clearly prone to this.
Often experience and intuition are used to determine what's a good idea
over a bad idea. Experience and intuition in design fulfill this
definition of "art." But, further, Design also overlaps with the
definition of art as in the "production of aesthetic object" to quote m-w.com).

So in this way, we can define design fulfilling two separate definitions of art. Also, there is of course the technology in design. How things are made, and the complexity of those objects. So, if you are forced to define engineering design to someone - you can tell them it's part art, part art and part science.

Trolley Volley

2006-04-28T13:03:00.000-05:00

About 2 years ago, Gabrielle and I were camping up in the Pacific Northwest, and were about to head back to Seattle. I was thinking I should get a souvenir but nothing really reflected my experience there. So, when we realized we had to hurry to make the next ferry I grabbed a package of 6 dice in lieu of a beer-cozy, and we headed out. On the long ferry ride, there's not much to do, so we started to think of a new dice game that wouldn't just be all luck. (It seems that dice games lack strategy a lot more than card games, doesn't it?) Today, we are still the only players of Trolley Volley - partly because friends that we attempt to teach are dubious of playing a game "we made up". But, it's a real game - it's been play-tested now 100's of times. So, I present to you a brand new game for an old-fashioned medium.

Trolley Volley

Required: 6 6-sided dice, 2 people
Objective: Be the first to reach 25 points.
Scoring:

a trolley of length 3 (1,2,3 or 2,3,4 or 3,4,5 or 4,5,6) = 1 point.
a trolley of length 4 (1,2,3,4 or 2,3,4,5 or 3,4,5,6) = 3 points.
a trolley of length 5 (1,2,3,4,5 or 2,3,4,5,6) = 5 points.
a trolley of length 6 (1,2,3,4,5,6) = 7 points.

Trolley Volley has a similar flow to volleyball (hence part of the name). One person is offense, and as such they are the only one who can score. The other person is defense, and their goal is simply to re-gain the offensive position.

Play follows any number of volleys or rounds. The following is a description of a single round.

The offense player has four dice and the defense has two. Both players roll their dice simultaneously being careful not to lose track of what dice are theirs. Offense is attempting to make a trolley or a straight (in poker terminology) of either 3, 4, 5, or 6 numbers in a row. A successful trolley must have at least one or both of the defensive player's dice. The defense player is attempting to prevent this or to get any three of a kind (again, where at least one is from the defensive player), which would trump or derail any of the opponent's trolleys. After the first simultaneous roll, the offense player must first decide which of his four dice she/he will re-roll. They can choose to stay or re-roll 1, 2, 3, or all 4. After they pick up their dice to re-roll, defense makes the same decision on their two. Both players then simultaneously roll their chosen dice, and the volley is now complete (yes, that's a short volley!). Based on the dice values, the players determine whether the offense scored a successful volley or not. If not, then the players switch roles.

Derailing

I mentioned the concept of derailing the offense by the defense achieving three of a kind. Many times this will stop a trolley that overlaps the three of a kind. For example, let's say after the second roll of dice the final outcome is:

		4
2	3	4	5
2		4

Where the offense has rolled the blue numbers and the defense has rolled the red. Even though the offense got a nice trolley of 2, 3, 4, 5 (remember a successful trolley has to have at least include at least of one of the defense' die), the defense wins the volley since it created a three of a kind block ( 4, 4, 4).

The Situation

Let's say that the result was slightly different…

	4
2	4	5
2	4	5

Here, the defense has achieved a three of a kind, but there is nothing to block, since the offense was not able to make a trolley. Of course, it is clearly, the defense's turn to be offense, but additionally you enter into a mode of play, we simply call – the situation. This is basically like a hat-trick in hockey. The new offense player gets 5 dice to roll, and the defense has only one to fend off the trolleys.

That's it - kind of confusing to learn, but quite easy to play. A couple practice rounds and you'll quickly advance in the ranks of all-time best Trolley Volley players. Currently, there are only the two of us.

The hardest logic puzzle...

2006-04-25T14:43:00.000-05:00

The hardest logic puzzle I’ve encountered seems to be lost. At least I can find no reference to it online, so I’ve taken the liberties (or perhaps you view it as an injustice if you are the original author) to rewrite the problem here.

Tale of the Diseased Monks
One Sunday evening after working in the fields, the secluded monks of the Kaetorsian order gathered for evening prayers. After the usual somber songs and pious prayers, the high priest said, “I have a grave announcement. It appears a horrible disease has fallen on our community this fine spring day. Some of you have acquired a disease from working in the fields today. I know this because the disease results in a purple spot on your forehead, and I can see that some of you have this. From what I know of this most evil disease - you will remain unharmed for 14 days. After which, the disease will spread to others, and you will experience a most painful passing that may last months. If we are not careful, this disease will completely destroy our peaceful monastery. Therefore, I ask that those of you who have this spot please remove yourself from our community before these two weeks are over. Despite the fact that all of you have taken a vow of silence, and a vow of humility, and thus will not be able to inform one another of the forehead spot, and even though we lack mirrors and the lake is choppy and you are unable to see for yourself whether you have this spot, you are all trained highly in the ways of logic and will be able to deduce on your own whether or not you have become infected. In this way, we will carry on as we always have. You will work in solitarily all morning and we will congregate here every evening to welcome one another to this holy life we share. Some of you would prefer that I simply point out those of you who are diseased and while I have not taken the vow of silence that you have taken, my vow of humility prevents me from calling attention to your dysfunctions. Good night”
The next few days passed as they always have. The monks that had been infected seemed as good natured as the others, and no one treated one another any differently. However, after more than a week, as the two week deadline approached, an air of nervousness crept in. The second Saturday after the high priest’s announcement was particularly tense. The next day marked the two week deadline before the disease was to spread again, and the diseased monks were still working and praying along side the healthy ones. After the congregation disbanded from the Saturday evening prayers, the monks returned to their private quarters. On Sunday, two weeks after the high priest announcement, all of the diseased monks were gone. Through their highly tuned logic skills, they were able to determine that they had been affected and removed themselves.
How many monks were infected? And how did they determine it?

Mike Ladd's Negrophilia - a review

2006-04-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

Here's an album I've been listening to a lot lately even though it's over a year old. Some would call Mike Ladd a rapper. And so, I feel a little bashful about my first music review being a rap CD. Truth is there is some rapping on this CD, but don't let that scare you - this is smart music. Mr. Ladd, a New Yorker, is likely to doubt that his music extends beyond the 5 boroughs, but this one texan is a proud owner of Negrophilia - few collections dig as deep or attempt to make as much of a statement of this disc. So, if you're a country music fan (which I am proudly not) this will probably be a stretch for you.
The genre of music here is hard to define, but one in which I've been seeking out lately. Music that crosses the boundaries of electronica and jazz while avoiding the black holes that are rock & pop. In other words, the music is artsy. And in listening to Ladd's compositions you feel as if you're absorbing a performace art troop at a hip Manhattan establishment.
One clear defining element of this work is the jazz musicians that are either 1) dictating the melodic phrases that Ladd filters through to define key emotions or is it 2) that Ladd is creating the music logic (ala sheet music?) which is filtered through these talented musicians. My feeling is the latter, and not to simply give Ladd the benefit of the doubt. But, one can hear the type of phrases that clearly come with some specified direction. On "Back At Ya", the troop is actually quite limited. There is a clear harmony and melody followed throughout. Fortunately, the musicians push free jazz phrasing through the mix. The post-mash-up is a reconstruction of the recorded jam that defines the true talents of the artist. What I imagine to be a painstaking effort that too many who have never messed with electronic music will likely overlook but will hopefully appreciate the freshness.
Other reviews of this disc point out that the ambitious attempt results in a slightly flawed or jumbled statement of black american culture. But, again, Ladd is showing many facets in this work. Part of the cultural statements is to illustrate the numerous facets and the complex interplay of sub-cultures. The album begins to peter-out with instrumentals of what is to sound like comfortable older couples engaging in NY high life. And these gorgeous yet simple pieces ("Sam and Milli Dine Out" and "Nancy and Carl go Christmas Shopping") are hard to justify next to caustic tales of blacks treated as second class citizens in our not-so-distant past, and more subtle (yet humorous) commentary of "Sleep Patterns of Black Expatriots Circa 1960".
As music goes, it is important to have themes. As a listener, we can decide how much to invest in this. And so, when it comes down to it, the music - this new genre that attempts to side-step Rock/Pop and establish a truly American art form that combines jazz, spoken word, and digital capabilities - is quite exceptional to this white jazz nerd now living in the South.

jammed in too tight

2006-04-18T17:32:00.000-05:00

So, I’m in this band, Concentric. I began it about 5 years ago as an outlet for my “songwriting.” Yes, the quotes around songwriting are intentional. When you write instrumental music, you sometimes feel that you’re not really writing music even though it may be more complex than vocal music. When are you done? Has the theme gotten to repetitive? Has the intended emotion of the song been communicated?
Anyway, once you get your head deep into songwriting, it becomes like any other creative outlet – you start to become over-sensitive.
In the latest incarnation of Concentric, we’re doing a lot of simultaneous cooperative songwriting – basically jamming -free of any borders. A free jazz jam isn’t always that free with me. I can’t help myself sometimes – I get too concerned about trying to write more structure on the fly. Here are two snippets from our last jam where about 2 or 3 minutes into it, I’ve found a phrase, I can’t let go – I’m jammed in too tight.
Here’s a first sample…another short spring Austin went from freezing to 100F in a matter of 3 weeks)
Here’s the second…where you’re from (a random title, a brooding tale of your troubled youth – you are haunted)
Anyway, being jammed in tight is not bad for the bass player (that’s me), that’s because humans like the bass simple and repetive. Almost always – from rap to punk to classical. Why, I don’t know – some biological reason? a repetition of a low pitch snore that comforts you as a child?

graph - an overused word

2006-04-15T11:53:00.000-05:00

This week I’ve been working on a first year report on a grant I have, to represent mechanical systems with graphs – part of the report has to be fairly well-simplifed as it may be seen by a US senator. So, I’ve been thinking about how well understood the concept of a graph is. Do you know what a graph is? A graph is one of many things dictionaries and encyclopedias only whittle it down to about 10 definitions a piece. What I refer to is unfortunately referred to as a mathematical graph.

But are these ever use by normal people in everyday life? Yes. Even senators are likely to have seen a few. For example, that playoff schedule for March madness, your family tree, a map to your house, a diagram from a user’s manual, and a flowchart.

Mathematicians dig graphs and a whole bunch of theory can be applied to them. But when it really comes down to it, these graphs are a way to visualize complex things in life - be it a playoff schedule or the innards of an automotive part.

But, is that all a graph is good for – presenting information? Or can graphs be used in reverse? Can we first make a graph and then use it as a template for the design of something?

Turns out, this has become a real calling in life for me. So, more to come on this topic.

finding the right energy

2006-04-10T23:09:00.000-05:00

I want to take a simplified view of energy today. First off, why do we need energy?
A. lighting: the original use of energy - old folks still refer to energy companies as the light company. People want to see when it's dark - to read, to work more, to see what went bump in the night. No changing this, shy of taking a more aggressive approach to daylight savings time. Bulbs are pretty darn inefficient, and new sources such as fluorescent, halogen, and LEDs are better but people tend to prefer the yellow-y glow. Oh well, we should be able to mimic that soon (if not already) with LEDs.
B. computers/audio/visual - your cell phone, your mp3 player, your laptop with the battery that always goes out. In general these things are pretty efficient, and manufacturers are driven to make them more so - despite the energy crisis - for portability and longer use
C. all things mechanical (transportation/dishwashers/lawnmowers ) - here's where things get interesting! Basically we like our mechanical energy as something that spins, since spinning things are compact (compared to things moving out along a straight line) and easy to change into something else.

How can we make things spin?
1. an engine - powered by gasoline/petroleum
2. a motor - powered by electricity
3. animal power - yokes, bicycles
4. air pressure/wind - those cool air-powered tools at the mechanic's
5. water pressure/waterwheels
The latter three are hardly taken seriously in many products. Why? Three reasons:
i. inefficiencies in overcoming the discrepancy in energy type (spinning to reciprocating, spinning to spinning at higher speeds, etc.)
ii. inefficiencies in overcoming the discrepancy in time (i.e. storage - you can make energy now, but want to use it later)
iii. inefficiencies in overcoming the discrepancy in space (transmission - you can make energy here, but you need it there).
Of course, there's also the issue of amount. You can probably walk to the store, but the amount of energy required to walk to Toronto is not something you plan to expend on your next business trip. At any rate, these inefficiencies need to be better understood before we rule these seemingly lo-fi solutions out (3, 4, and 5). Hybrid energy is about combining these 5 to solve your problems as opposed to simply relying on one. Using multiple energy sources is a painful way to do the task at hand, so "hybridding" should be driven by manufacturers doing this for you seamlessly.

But it's hard to resist the lure of that electric motor. The good thing about itis that it takes the same input as A and B above - electricity. So, that's why we need energy - specifically electrical energy.

Problem is, electricity is also prone to the "inefficiencies in overcoming the discrepancy in space." There was a talk the other week on fallacies of the hydrogen economy. I couldn't make it, but grilled some who went. It seems the speaker had no hidden agenda but was merely pointing out the absurbity in using energy to make hydrogren to translate back into energy as opposed to making energy in the first place. That's a fine thing to hang your hat on, and I imagine one could do quite a bit of math to prove it - although fairly straightforward.

Here's my concern: No one would agree that Duracells (or Energizers) would solve the energy crisis. But, still, we use batteries all the time. Why? Aren't you listening?! Because of the discrepancy in space - they're portable. What else is portable? hydrogen, gasoline, and well us - assuming we're going along for the ride.

why epicycle?

2006-04-06T15:51:00.000-05:00

Putting the “epi-“ on the word “cycle” refers to the rotation of something upon something else. Remember that spirograph you had as a kid? Those fun little doodles are often the result of making a round piece rotate upon or within some other shape. So, this is a rather nice word, epicycle. It has some subtle mathematical implications that I like and can make some rather complex and beautiful shapes – math and art in one.
One rather popular use of the word is as it is used to describe epicyclic gear trains or planetary gears. This happens to be a wonderful invention that defies many in its ability to compactly and efficiently produce a large mechanical advantage. The design transcends patents and is now both a highly used concept and a wonderful demonstration of kinematic mechanisms. So, part of the naming is based on this as well.
Finally, I can see an analogy between epicyclic rotations and my daily grind. What I mean is that I have a vocation that takes a huge chunk of my time. But, the research and teaching of engineering design is surrounded by my other passions (or rotations) namely music and other creative endeavors.
A search on epicycle brings up a little history too. The view that the earth was the center of the universe has been debunked by showing how nearly impossible it would be for heavenly bodies to move in an epicyclic fashion. Therefore the use of the term could also be used as a badge of believing more in the power of scientific discovery than blind faith. I'm not sure I wanna make a stand on this (at least just yet). It's fascinating though to know that some very bright people (even from 2200 years ago) are not immune to going great lengths to justify or cover up what they want to believe in.

Math, Science, Design, and Repair

2006-04-04T16:54:00.000-05:00

I've been taking an extended weekend to spend time with my parents and
grandmother who are visiting from up north. Most conversations revolve
around what we will see or saw in our day. But some of the most
rewarding conversations are with my dad talking about mechanical things.
My dad has the world's best mechanical intuition and can fix about
anything or understand why something works the way it does or why it is
likely to break. I inherited a smidgen of this and its helpful as a
teacher of engineering design. So I have some basis for making the
pending parenting advice.
It is true that young Americans are quite gadget-savvy yet many are not
pursuing an occupation in high tech areas. - that is to say, fewer US
students are majoring in engineering. If you read that paranoia too in
The World is Flat and would like to foster some DaVinci or Eintein in
your child here's some blatant advice.
Lots of math and science activities are important in budding engineers,
but so are design and repair activities. Design is tough - it's
expensive. When I was young I drew a lot - a great way to exercise
one's design skills - crafts, cooking, playing music all feed into a
drive to want to make stuff - which is one glamourous aspect of
engineering. But something that's easier and can be very satisfying is
repair. Helping a child repair a toy is an experience they are not
likely to forget.
Kids break toys all the time, many are in fact designed to fail. I don't
care how much you chastise them about being careful and conscientious,
but one time see if the toy has the following properties.
a) it doesn't plug in
b) it is primarily held together by screws (you do own a screwdriver,
right?)
c) has failed/broken in a non-obvious way. Meaning something inside is
broken - not on the surface.
This toy is a perfect opportunity to do repair. That sounds boring, but
the reward is that the child gets the toy again in (possibly) complete
working order, and they earned it!
Now guide them through taking the thing apart. Careful with the screws -
you collect them, don't penalize the sloppiness - they have a delicate
momentum now that should be fostered. Ask leading questions, "What do
you think we'll find inside?" "what do you think this thing component
does?" Mention that engineering designers created the toy - made all the
decisions about how long, how wide, what color? Present these mythical
beasts as happy elves that love their job and making children happy.-
well don't make them too magical - but don't make them about to be a
bunch of mean businessmen in 3-piece suits either.
The good thing about many electromechanical devices is that when they
break we can really see what went wrong. The material cracked, a spring
jumped off of a post, etc. Finding what's broke may take some patience
and persistence. If something is complicated you can be boggled by the
complexity, but the more you look at it the simpler it gets. Asks what
should the toy do, why is it not doing it now... this may help both of
you find the problem.
In the end, I give you a 40% chance of fixing it. Oh well, you tried.
You can try again. The repairing exercise will build mechanical
intuition even if the toy doesn't go together again. Also that
intimidation factor you both feel will diminish. There's no magic in
technology just a lot of time and cooperation. Repair is maybe not as
glamorous as design but it's still important in a lot of industries and
cheaper and easier as a learning exercise.

environmentally-friendly lawnmowing

2006-03-31T12:05:00.003-06:00

It’s that time of year again (at least in this southern region) to fire up the lawnmower and make for a presentable abode. The recent Wired article on transgenic lawns is as captivating as any Wired article. I find it to essentially be a rebuttal to some NYTimes cover story that they reference. In short, the Wired article claims that the transgenic grass is not taking over Oregon as some apparently believe, and that even though transgenic has a negative connotation – plant life is plant life – the more of it the better we all are. What’s wrong with boosting a grass’ DNA to be immune to one of our man-made pesticides anyway? Probably something, but nobody knows what. I would think the answer is so utterly impossible to predict that your most erudite global ecologists will have an opinion as defensible as Kurt Vonnegut would might have. So I’m sitting the fence on this one.
And short of ripping up our yard and installing a xeriscape (my friend says "xeriscape just means your yard will look like crap”). I’ll be plowing down the St. Augustine that I so cherish every week in my two-stroke polluter. The neighbor newsletter once extolled the benefits of a push mower – doesn’t pollute (chemically or aurally) and you get a ton of exercise. So, my idea for the day is to find something between a mower powered by human-yoking and a mower powered by an internal combustion engine. The answer to me seems obvious – a bicycle mower! Think of it, bike parts are so well-evolved.
You won’t go fast, so you’d need basically some low gearing to move both the wheels and the blades. Perhaps a flywheel is in order to keep the blades spinning fast and evenly. Of course, safety will demand a brake or two (one on the blades and one on the wheels). Plus there's the issue of bike tires on your lawn. You’d need fatter tires to prevent damaging the lawn – perhaps like mountain-bike tires from a kids bike – only fatter.

Here are two ideas, the first is a recumbent with blades. Careful getting on and off!

This one is hybrid of the gym stair climber, the roomba, and the segway.

You’d get a good view of where the blades were – maneuverability could be a plus if you could design the geartrain.

plane ride to Paris

2006-03-30T08:53:00.000-06:00

I had a dream last night that my wife and I were flying to Paris. Sounds
great, but in the dream we never leave the airport. It
was one of those anxious dreams where you never accomplish the menial
tasks of, in this case, boarding an airplane. In the dream I have
trouble with the TSA people, which isn't exactly fantasy. Ever since the
ramp-up in security, I've been on their watch-list. Not me specifically
but rather my name is apparently a cause for alarm. If this happens to
you, you should know that there is a form on the TSA site that can
remove you from said list. I never knew it existed until it was
mentioned to me rather casually by a check-in agent. You can get that
form here if you're in the same boat and afraid you'll miss your plane.
Anyway, this uninteresting dream lead me to a new brainteaser which I'm
not sure is solvable. Here goes...
You're lucky enough to get a first class window seat on a transatlantic
flight, but your (wife, husband, friend, etc.) is stuck in a middle seat
in coach. You'd like to sit with them but you can't get over the fact
that you'd have to give up such a great seat. You happen to know that
there are a few empty middle seats in coach, so you'd ideally move back
to coach to join your friend so long as the two of you can have that
extra seat in your row to stretch out in. What's the minimum number of
moves of people you can make to arrange this (if it's even possible)?
Understand that you can move people, or rather convince people to move
only if they get a better seat.
1. first class is preferred to coach
2. window seats are preferred to aisle seats
3. aisle seats are preferred to middle seats
4. and sitting next to an empty seat is preferred to sitting next to
people.

Make sense? Is there a solution?

sticking with monopolies vs. antiestablishmentarianism

2006-03-29T11:17:00.000-06:00

I’ve been interested in starting a blog for months now. When I happened upon Yahoo!’s new 360 approach earlier this week. I decided to jump in. After messing around with 360, I soon became dissatisified with it – no custom url’s, and the typical cartoon-y Yahoo! look and feel. My dissatification was compounded by the fact that I really like to interact with as few internet and computer companies as possible. You see, I currently use Yahoo! a lot. I use them as my default home page. I find phone #'s, and directions with them. I do all my internet searches with them. I choose movies and restaurants by on Yahoo! pages. The thruth is, I honestly believe I am most efficient when I work closely with one site/company/product.
I would say that this is not the norm compared to many. I, for instance, like Microsoft products for the same reason. Many people though, would rather be a little edgy – buck the establishment if you will – going to many different sources for their various needs. Is this better or worse?
It’s all really a second-order-effect, the primary effect should be performance and/or cost. But our decisions are often muddled by some commitment to companies we’ve used in the past. Why should we care commit our affections to such companies?
Perhaps to confirm our past decisions. Or for those of you who have antiestablishment leanings, it more about being unique in supporting the little guy, and avoiding being a contributer to big corporations which have all been evil in America for the last 50 years or more (the facetiousness is intentional here).
So in summary. I’ve defected from Yahoo! on this one, and went with blogger.com. Such instances can be sources of important self-reflection. Now hopefully I can apply this to other things. But I must say that I’m still anxiously waiting at the “gates of microsoft” for whatever slightly-clunky-but-extremely-useful product they let out next.

Entry for March 27, 2006 - "do it later, dude-a-lator"

2006-03-27T20:11:00.000-06:00

Here it is, futureman or futurewoman!
You've scrolled all the back to my first blog back in March of '06. God, remember the Naughts?! What a crazy time.

So, the motivation for starting a blog should probably go here. And, what can I say about the need or desire for such a thing? Yes, it is egotistical. Yes, it is self-serving. But, I can sincerely say of the latter that I hope it helps me in organizing my thoughts - and once an entry is written I have satisfied my goal (thoughts instantly organized into electronic bits). I post it online just in case that I am one day famous, and you - futurewoman or futureman - are here to see what made this famous person tick. Or perhaps, you are from a future not far removed from this present tense, and are indeed reading this as a way to assuage your guilt for not doing that arduous thing that you are supposed to be doing.

Well, that makes two of us!

Right now, I am supposed to be making up a test for my grad students to take in the not-so-distant-future - a.k.a. tomorrow morning. The test is to see how well the students have learned a dozen or so optimization algorithms, which as far as I can tell is a difficult thing to ask on paper. It's like asking a dance major to draw their moves on paper instead of performing them.

As for the title of this seminal entry- my wife has a pet name for me which is dude-a-lator. She is not fond of me using the term "dude", and so her approach is to internalize it as a name for me. This is a two-prong term as it feeds into my tendencies as a professional procrastinator. What's that, futureman (or futurewoman)? You're a procrastinator too?! Well, then you too can be as famous as me someday!