Trolling for summer work ideas

Hello World.

So here it is, Monday morning. I awoke to an amazing splitting headache, in a dorm-style room with too few blinds, too thin walls and with an amazing, tall, driven and educated woman at my side. This May morning feels like the kind of morning you sit out front of Hulings and listen to Rob Oden (dated reference, I know) pontificate about how today is the beginning of it all but that since the day you arrived at Carleton, you were destined for this change... Blah Blah Blah. It's just such a pretty day. Makes me love being alive, even with a hangover. (Undergrads can DRINK.)

(EDIT: Now that I'm an east coast kid, I use driven in senses other than the pejorative... What does that say about who I've become?)

So now that I've set the stage a little bit here, let me delve into the issue that brings me to post from work. I'm working this summer--my summer without an extended summer vacation--and have been charged with making a summer to-do list here at AU. I'm employed full-time and will be teaching five hours per week... which leaves 30 hours per week to do other things.

So, for everyone, what was the single thing that most improved your learning while at Carleton? (Sorry, it has to be a thing, not a person)

Now alienate most of my audience, scientists, what does your department have that you think my department needs? (I have a machine shop, I have unlimited internet hosting capabilities, I have a decent budget... but probably not enough to buy a set of PS3s and make a supercomputer. Sadly)

Now to alienate Will (are there any other non-physics scientists who read this blag?), Physicists, what do you think I should make? So far I've got a Bell-inequality lab, the bike thing I posted on facebook and an electromagnetic can crusher... I'm thinking E&M stuffs but am of course open to other fields. Maybe something RC that involves some servo motors?

If you have any ideas to help me on this quest, please let me know. I'll post video of my can crusher when it's done. And DAMN it's going to be cool. (Preview: it tears apart a can by discharging a fuck-ton of electricity through it, no contact needed between the can and the machine.)

Hey guys

I haven't written in a while, partly because I've been busy studying for my prelim exam and the beginning of the school year. That and I guess I've just been too lazy to write to update y'all on the goings on in my life.

The prelim exam is a two day test, covering everything that I should have learned in 4 years as an undergrad and in my first year as a graduate student in physics. So: Electricity and Magnetism, Special Relativity, Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Mechanics, oh, and lots of math. All of the Ph.D. candidates have to pass the preliminary to continue on in the program, we generally get two shots in case we don't pass the first time. So about the last month of the summer I spent trying to be prepared for the exam. More than once during the process I was struck with the impression that I had learned too much, that the sum of human knowledge was too great, and that maybe solipsism would be a more tractable philosophy.

My New Theory of Everything:


Back to the point. The prelim exam kind of sucks, and it certainly isn't the best way to test our propensity in physics, but I guess I made some connections while studying. And--yes--I did pass, so that's what matters at this point.

So the day after the prelim was over classes started--as a grad student, I do miss having long breaks of not having to do anything school related. This term I'm taking Gravitation (General Relativity) which I think will be a fun course.

I have a light course-load because I've found a professor who actually has some extra grant money lying around and is willing to give me some of it to help him do his research. This part of grad school, I've found, is not always as easy as it sounds. Anyway, the professor that I'm working for has been researching granular materials, particularly their critical point where they transition between being liquid-like and being solid-like.

Starting out with a research group can be slow, and my first simulation seems to be... inconclusive at this point. But I can tell you about one aspect of my work that has been interesting. That has been learning how to do general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU). So what does this mean? A GPU is the primary component of the graphics card in your computer which carries out many of the computations necessary for displaying graphics on your screen. Compare this to the CPU (C for Central) which carries out all of the other instructions from the programs running on your computer. What you may not know about your CPU is that while your task manager or activity monitor tells you that you are running many processes, each of which are in turn running several threads (a single set of instructions) all at the same time, your CPU can only actually handle one set of instructions at a time. So it actually cycles through all of the threads, but does so so quickly that to you, your iTunes music plays simultaneously while you type your paper and search for distractions on the internet. (Many computers now have dual, quad, or multi-core processors where each core actually can run threads simultaneously with each other). What makes a GPU special is that it has hundreds of cores and can run at least that many threads at once. This was originally useful for computer graphics, especially in video games, where, for example, you might have some 3D object which you could represent with a large array of data. Then in order to figure out how to display the object on the screen, how to light it, etc., you need to perform some calculations on the entire array of data. While GPU's generally can't do a single calculation as fast as a CPU can, their ability to do many calculations in parallel can make them much faster at this type of calculation. So these types of calculations are offloaded onto the GPU greatly increasing the overall speed of the program and allowing programmers to make more detailed graphics.

Of course, computers are being used to handle very large sets of data for many more reasons today, including research. So it is only natural that researchers and others would want to get in on the power of graphics processors. One company that has made that possible is NVIDIA with their CUDA architecture, which is what I've been learning to use. They created a library extension to the commonly used C++ programming language that can be used with any of their graphics cards in production today. Learning to write programs in parallel has been interesting and difficult at times. I have to worry about things like two threads accessing the same memory which can make algorithms to do simple things much more complicated. But I'm finally getting the hang of it and pretty soon we'll see what kind of a speedup it can have on our programs. Anyway, I think it's kind of interesting stuff and it's a pretty safe bet that computers and computer programs will increasingly rely on massively parallel processors like GPU's in the future.

Finally, I realize that got kind of long and I don't know if it's really interesting to everyone else, so I'll leave you with the youtube video I've been enjoying this weekend:



Someone needs to mash this up into a debate between Phil Davidson and Basilmarceaux.com. I smell youtube gold! Get on that internet.

The World Is Going To Turn Into A Black Hole!!!!111!!!1111!

Oh Fuck!





P.S. I don't actually think it's going to turn into a black hole. And this is actually pretty sweet. But I'm just sayin'...

Day One

I'm going to post my first two entries in my Russia journal here. I'm stealing internet, and I'm kind of nervous because in Soviet Russia, internet steals you! Anyway, pics will be coming shortly, but you can read about my many adventures in the Motherland!

Wow. What an adventure, and I’m not even in Moscow yet! I’m currently sitting on the plane, it’s 10:00 PM my time but 6:00 AM Moscow time. I haven’t really slept at all, so I’m gonna have horrible jet lag tomorrow. Oh well. We’re flying by Iceland now, according to the screens on the plane, and we just flew over Greenland.
I woke up this morning, got on my plane, and flew to Atlanta, no big deal. Got to Atlanta, sat around the International Terminal, watched some Breaking Bad, laughed at CNN, and tried to read my book about St. Petersburg. While attempting to read, I was sitting by myself at the Moscow gate, about 5 hours before the plane was to leave, when an older man walked right up to me, smiled at me, and said nothing. I looked up, smiled, and looked back at my book, thinking, “Oh no, why me?” Then the man started mumbling in broken English, asking me about customs, when I realized that this man didn’t speak any English and had no real idea what he was supposed to do. At which I said, in Russia, “I speak Russian, can I help you?” The man’s face lit up with a smile, and I knew that I had made my first Russian friend. Turns out that this man’s name is Victor, he’s from Irkutsk, and he was in the US to visit his daughter who lives in Daytona Beach. He wasn’t sure whether he needed to go through Customs in the US or in Russia, so I took him to the information desk and translated for him. After that, we walked back to the gate and talked at length about Russian literature (he likes Pushkin), American literature (Hemingway), Siberia, Pushkin’s family history, and all sorts of other stuff that I know because I sold my soul to the Russian major. I also let him borrow my phone, at which he pulled out a wad of dollar bills and asked how much. I, being a good person, said, “Nothing.” I also helped him to order food at Panda Express. His wife is Chinese, so he claimed to be an expert. I think Victor might have been disappointed in the quality of our airport American Chinese fast food. He asked what Gatorade was, which I couldn’t really explain, but he bought it and claimed that they have some beverage similar to it in Siberia. Then, about an hour before take off, a man with bloodshot eyes, wearing a shirt that said, “My Indian name is Crawling Drunk,” walked/stumbled up to Victor and said hello in Russian. Then he asked about passports and visas. At this point the rest of the Carleton Moscow group showed up, so my attention was briefly diverted. When I started paying attention again, the two were embroiled in a conversation about Pushkin and World War 2. I think the drunk was arguing that the US entered the war late to hurt the Soviet Union. I thought it was funny that 2 Russians that didn’t know each other would end up discussing Pushkin and World War 2. In the end, Victor gave me his phone number in Irkutsk so when we fly to Siberia in May I can go visit him!
So now I’m on the plane, sitting next to a Physics major from Novosibirsk. His father lives in California so he makes the trip back and forth fairly often. He spent the last few days skiing at Lake Tahoe. He seems to be extremely intelligent, he would like to get his PhD in Physics in the United States, but has done all of his undergraduate studies in Novosibirsk. We discussed politics at length, such as the drinking age, legalization of marijuana, Putin, capitalism in Russia, and much more. He was very familiar with the in-flight movies. One thing that both he and Victor have in common is a love of Jack London novels, which isn’t surprising, but I hadn’t thought of it before. Jack London would be the most Russian novelist that America has produced.
I’ve already spoken a lot of Russian, discussed Russian culture in depth, and met 2 Siberians, and I haven’t even reached Europe yet! This trip is going to be amazing.

First day in Russia: very tiring. The plane arrived at 10:00 AM Moscow time, but 2:00 AM Wichita time. I didn’t really sleep on the plane, but once I got off the plane I was fueled by the adrenaline rush that took over my system. Going through Customs and Passport Control was very intimidating, Russian women in military uniform can be very scary. Also, the fact that I have long, blond hair in my passport photo didn’t help at all. Once I got out of the airport, we met Diane, who gave us train and bus cards, 500 Rubles, a plug converter, and documents. Then, Nikolai Nikolayevich drove Megan and I to our homestays.
Russia is not at all like I expected to be. I have never seen so many advertisements anywhere in the world. The shopping centers here make the Mall of America look like a small, scummy mall. There’s a huge Ikea about a mile away from the airport, and I also saw several МакДоналдс during our drive through the city. And what a drive it was. Russian drivers are INSANE. Especially Nikolai, I thought we were going to die about 10 times in the hour and a half it took to get from the airport to my homestay. Moscow is a huge, sprawling city, filled with high-rise apartment buildings that appear to have been built during the Krushchev era. It's very interesting to look at all the cars on the road, the range from old Soviet junk pile to Mercedes and Range Rover is astounding. And the advertisements... Driving through Moscow is an experience every American should have. Moscow streets are eerily similar to the set of Blade Runner.
But the most important part of my day was meeting Galina, my host mom. I think I might have gotten the best deal of anyone (except Nikki cuz she lives with 3 kids and an American). Galina tries very hard to speak English as much as she can, she's very friendly, and her apartment is very nice. I'd guess she's between 65 and 70, she's about 4 feet tall, and she says that her 4 year old grandson will come visit us. I took a nap right after I arrived and slept for 4 hours before I woke up. I gave her the gifts I brought after I woke up. She loved the dreamcatcher I brought her, and wants to put it up in her hallway. She also liked my photo album, especially the picture of the red tree in the yard of my house. After I gave her her gifts, we drank tea and she heated up my dinner. I had a vegetable soup with broccoli, potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes, which was delicious. I got to try Russian bread for the first time, which comes in round loafs and is more similar to sourdough bread than American bread. And the main course she made for me was spaghetti with chicken, which was very delicious.
After dinner I unpacked all of my clothes, and then she asked if I'd like to go out for a walk. Which leads me to my current location. I'm currently at a Coffee House (Кофе Хоус) that's a few blocks down the street from Galina's apartment. I made it very obvious that I'm an American when I walked in because I tried to order at the counter instead of realizing that it's a sit-down coffee house. Oops. But I successfully ordered a green tea, and here I am!
Moscow is becoming very Americanized, but on steroids. Coffee House is a chain, like Starbucks, but you can order beer, wine, or hard liquor. Again, I'm astounded by the amount of advertising I've seen today, it permeates life even more than in the US. Or maybe it's just less subtle.
I only saw a few churches during my drive to the apartment, and 2 building that look like the University. I live very close to Moscow State, as well as downtown Moscow.
Well, that's all I have for now. I'll post pictures at some point, I'm planning on taking about 400 over the next 4 days.