It took my computer nine hours to go through 13 million points of data to produce this plot. (Yes I plotted in excel; my gnuplot isn't working. How about you shut up, Snobby McHater?)
I found a blog where I
Team Ghost - High Hopes from 16ar on Vimeo.
I was crazy jealous over the snowpocalypse that happened in Seattle. Finally! Snow in Lille! I went out and slipped around on the streets, and threw snowballs, and stayed warm in an Irish pub. It was wonderful.
I went to see Arctic Monkeys this week, and they tore it up! A thing I found odd was the start time. Back in the states, when they say a show starts at 8:00, that means the show actually starts at 9:00. Not here. When they say the show starts at 8:00 it starts at 8:00. So punctual!
I had to send a sad email the other day. A guy from Boeing emailed me about wanting me to come into his office for an interview. I had to break the poor guy's heart and tell him I wasn't actually in the country, so the chances of me showing up at his office were mighty slim. I can honestly say I've denied interviews from both Boeing and NASA. In these tough economic times, this might be a really stupid move. Oh well.
Several French girls around here have the Snooki hair thing going on. Since French fashion is popular in the US, is American fashion popular in France? If so, is "Snooki" what people think of as American fashion? God help us all.
A professor of mine used the word gigaflops the other day. For you non-nerds out there (i.e. decent, normal, non-awkward people), giga = one trillion, and flops = floating point operations per second. Gigaflops is a measure of computing speed. Except when he says gigaflops, he pronounces it "jiggaflops." I really hope he talks about power one of these days.
The Vega launch vehicle is set to have its first launch on February 13. It's a rocket developed in a joint effort by the Italian Space Agency and the European Space Agency. Vega holds a special place in my heart for several reasons. For those of you that know me in person, one of my three names is Vega. Vega just happens to be my favorite star in the sky, and my favorite Street Fighter character. At my last place of employment, my first assignment was working on the reaction control thrusters of Vega. My boss at the time thought it was the greatest thing ever: Vega working on Vega. It was pretty much destiny. It's exciting to see something I had a hand in developing take flight. (I didn't do anything all that amazing; just a bunch of functional requirements. But still! Go Vega!)
Lastly is a story. A story about a man. This man just happens to be a legend in the world of turbulence, and a professor of mine. Let's call him Dr. USA.
One day Dr. USA was teaching something out of a book. He said something that one of his students questioned. The student asked how Dr. USA knows an assumption that was made was true. Dr. USA responds by saying that he doesn't actually know it's true, so they should try and prove it. He cleans up the whiteboard to start fresh from scratch. He takes up a good portion of the class trying to prove this thing, but he kept running into problems. Eventually it's the end of class and the student has lost interest, but not Dr. USA. He tries and tries to prove this thing, but he can't seem to get it. He even reaches out to his colleagues and asks them if they have ever tried to proving this. It turns out none of them have.
Two months of working on this problem pass, and finally Dr. USA decides that if he can't prove it, then it must be false. This is a big deal, because it's an idea that has been accepted as true in the field for decades. Questioning something like this is almost considered blasphemy to fluid dynamicists. One day, Dr. USA is giving a talk about how this popular idea in this book is wrong. Sitting in the front row, is a young, bright-eyed student with the book in hand. He asks Dr. USA something along the lines of: How could you say this is wrong? It's been around for years! No one has ever questioned it! Experiments support this idea! Finally he asks "Okay, if this is wrong, then how would you fix it?" Dr. USA responds, "You want me to fix your book?" "Yes I do." Dr. USA calmly walks down to the student, takes his book, opens it to Chapter 4, and starts ripping out pages. The entire auditorium bursts out in a frenzy. Oh by the way, the book in question is written by Dr. USA's advisor; the guy who gave him his PhD. The advisor wasn't actually there but word travels fast, especially with something like this.
After this happened, Dr. USA and his advisor don't speak for ~10 years. One day, they finally see each other at a conference. The two meet and greet and catch up on old times. Eventually, the advisor says to Dr. USA, "You know, now whenever I teach Chapter 4, I use your method."
Pretty much the baddest badass I've ever met.
