Orbis non sufficit
Saturday, April 29, 2006
In the Army...
So, I have been passed by an officer selection board, consisting of two army majors and two lieutenant colonels. Within the month I shall be commencing my officer training, or at least parading with the university regiment. It's kind of going to happen fairly fast now, it's weird after having been going through this proccess for so freaking long. At least I'm getting something out of it all now though. So once I start with that I'll have a fairly permanent part-time job, how weird will that be?
It was a fairly interesting day, I'm not supposed to talk about it in too much detail in case I give future applicants an unwarranted advantage but it was basically a bunch of group discussions on current issues, indivdual impromtu talks, an essay on a given problem, some outdoor problem solving exercises, some fitness testing and individual interviews with the panel of officers.
Uh oh, going to see my sisters play tonight, starts in 15 mins. Gotta go!
So, I have been passed by an officer selection board, consisting of two army majors and two lieutenant colonels. Within the month I shall be commencing my officer training, or at least parading with the university regiment. It's kind of going to happen fairly fast now, it's weird after having been going through this proccess for so freaking long. At least I'm getting something out of it all now though. So once I start with that I'll have a fairly permanent part-time job, how weird will that be?
It was a fairly interesting day, I'm not supposed to talk about it in too much detail in case I give future applicants an unwarranted advantage but it was basically a bunch of group discussions on current issues, indivdual impromtu talks, an essay on a given problem, some outdoor problem solving exercises, some fitness testing and individual interviews with the panel of officers.
Uh oh, going to see my sisters play tonight, starts in 15 mins. Gotta go!
Sunday, April 23, 2006
(pizz.) blom blom blom!
Freakin' crazy week!
This seems so weird to be sitting a computer again. The last week (starting from tuesday) has been pretty fricken AWESOME!
To begin with was the hiking trip that scotty fudge and I went on, scaling the heights of Mt Feathertop. Hopefully fudge will make a post and upload the picture of scotty's frozen hair, that was fantastic.
It was a damn cool trip, weather was pretty good for the most part, except for thursday morning when it was foggy so we couldn't see anything from the summit, but it was awesome anyway. The wind blew like a gale and with wind chill the temperature must have been a reasonable amount below zero. As I said before scotty's hair froze up there, along with all the grass on the wind-swept side of the mountain (which had horizontal icicles frozen onto it).
Sausage rolls never taste so good as when you've hiked 40 or so k's and have been eating canned spaghetti and "velish!".
There were also petrol issues :p on the way home, but we're here aren't we?
Then on thursday I was up at uni working on my crazy design project. The little contraption is pretty much finished now, just have to get the program right. The circuitry all seems to be hooked up right and doing what the program is telling it to do, just have to get the timing right, and maybe make minor changes to the mechanical parts if it doesn't quite work right. Its pretty cool looking though, its a big lego contraption with conveyer belts and wooden arms and string and a big battery, a circuit board and wires sticking out all over the place. Highly professional. I think we've done well with it, I imagine we'll pass even if it crashes and burns just because it looks like a worthy effort. Though thats not going to happen!
Then on thursday evening I left for BAND CAMP!!!
I have to say, it was awesome fun. They're all great people and it was fun hanging out with a bunch of musicians for two days. Some of them are so good its not fair! The past president was there, at about 2 am he and a bunch of others were having a huge jam session in one of the rehearsal rooms (a big shed). Sure, individually their parts may not have been hugely hard but they were able to tell each other the key of something and then just play that song, it was highly impressive (They were mostly from MOJO, the jazz group, who are highly pro and good at improv and rocking out). I whipped out my electric viola and joined in a bit, but I couldn't really keep up. They knew the songs and had played them some time in the past I think and I have had only a tiny bit of experience with improv. My viola makes a fairly mean electric bass though.
I havn't had much sleep in the last few days actually, I think it's starting to get to me. The night before last at about 1am-2am a whole group of us string players jumped into the shed and had our own little jam session. We sounded pretty damn good too considering that we were all sight reading. We played a few classical things and also some celtic stuff, very epic sounding. I've never player with a group of string players who were so talented, so it's been nuts. Considering the turnout we had in the middle of the night I'll have to make sure I do a good job organising actual rehearsals for us. I think I have it under control.
We spent most of the days practicing in our various main groups, (the society has 3 main ensembles) which is part of why we were rocking out in the middle of the night. There was also drinking and other frivolity, so it was interesting. Wasn't as crazy with the drinking as an engineering function or something would be, but this was better I think. I didn't wake up with hangovers at least. I did learn an interesting card game which I shall have to show you all some time, its very cool.
It was fun too cause I got to know my fellow viola players pretty well, they're cool (there are 6 or so of us, its unnatural!) we had good fun. Of course I got to know other people in the society too but I wasn't sitting next to them for most of the day. Last night was theme night too, "black and white" was the theme. That wasn't adhered to very well for the most part but a few people had interesting costumes. Me, I had a black kung-fu sort of outfit on, was kind of fun to walk around in. The other one of note was Cat's outfit (viola player and commitee member in charge of social things, ie it was her effort that made the camp happen really) She had a white dress with black musical notes and an ALTO CLEF (Yeah thats right all you sissies who play with strange illogical clefs).
Ok, I'm a little disoriented for going back to uni tommorow. I feel like I havn't been there in so long. I know I have things due tommorow but I'm having diffuiculty remembering what. I know I've done them though.
I've never played music so much before, it was kind of nuts. I think I might be getting some of my skill back though.
There's just random music and crap all flying through my head now, its messed up!
ROCK ON!
Freakin' crazy week!
This seems so weird to be sitting a computer again. The last week (starting from tuesday) has been pretty fricken AWESOME!
To begin with was the hiking trip that scotty fudge and I went on, scaling the heights of Mt Feathertop. Hopefully fudge will make a post and upload the picture of scotty's frozen hair, that was fantastic.
It was a damn cool trip, weather was pretty good for the most part, except for thursday morning when it was foggy so we couldn't see anything from the summit, but it was awesome anyway. The wind blew like a gale and with wind chill the temperature must have been a reasonable amount below zero. As I said before scotty's hair froze up there, along with all the grass on the wind-swept side of the mountain (which had horizontal icicles frozen onto it).
Sausage rolls never taste so good as when you've hiked 40 or so k's and have been eating canned spaghetti and "velish!".
There were also petrol issues :p on the way home, but we're here aren't we?
Then on thursday I was up at uni working on my crazy design project. The little contraption is pretty much finished now, just have to get the program right. The circuitry all seems to be hooked up right and doing what the program is telling it to do, just have to get the timing right, and maybe make minor changes to the mechanical parts if it doesn't quite work right. Its pretty cool looking though, its a big lego contraption with conveyer belts and wooden arms and string and a big battery, a circuit board and wires sticking out all over the place. Highly professional. I think we've done well with it, I imagine we'll pass even if it crashes and burns just because it looks like a worthy effort. Though thats not going to happen!
Then on thursday evening I left for BAND CAMP!!!
I have to say, it was awesome fun. They're all great people and it was fun hanging out with a bunch of musicians for two days. Some of them are so good its not fair! The past president was there, at about 2 am he and a bunch of others were having a huge jam session in one of the rehearsal rooms (a big shed). Sure, individually their parts may not have been hugely hard but they were able to tell each other the key of something and then just play that song, it was highly impressive (They were mostly from MOJO, the jazz group, who are highly pro and good at improv and rocking out). I whipped out my electric viola and joined in a bit, but I couldn't really keep up. They knew the songs and had played them some time in the past I think and I have had only a tiny bit of experience with improv. My viola makes a fairly mean electric bass though.
I havn't had much sleep in the last few days actually, I think it's starting to get to me. The night before last at about 1am-2am a whole group of us string players jumped into the shed and had our own little jam session. We sounded pretty damn good too considering that we were all sight reading. We played a few classical things and also some celtic stuff, very epic sounding. I've never player with a group of string players who were so talented, so it's been nuts. Considering the turnout we had in the middle of the night I'll have to make sure I do a good job organising actual rehearsals for us. I think I have it under control.
We spent most of the days practicing in our various main groups, (the society has 3 main ensembles) which is part of why we were rocking out in the middle of the night. There was also drinking and other frivolity, so it was interesting. Wasn't as crazy with the drinking as an engineering function or something would be, but this was better I think. I didn't wake up with hangovers at least. I did learn an interesting card game which I shall have to show you all some time, its very cool.
It was fun too cause I got to know my fellow viola players pretty well, they're cool (there are 6 or so of us, its unnatural!) we had good fun. Of course I got to know other people in the society too but I wasn't sitting next to them for most of the day. Last night was theme night too, "black and white" was the theme. That wasn't adhered to very well for the most part but a few people had interesting costumes. Me, I had a black kung-fu sort of outfit on, was kind of fun to walk around in. The other one of note was Cat's outfit (viola player and commitee member in charge of social things, ie it was her effort that made the camp happen really) She had a white dress with black musical notes and an ALTO CLEF (Yeah thats right all you sissies who play with strange illogical clefs).
Ok, I'm a little disoriented for going back to uni tommorow. I feel like I havn't been there in so long. I know I have things due tommorow but I'm having diffuiculty remembering what. I know I've done them though.
I've never played music so much before, it was kind of nuts. I think I might be getting some of my skill back though.
There's just random music and crap all flying through my head now, its messed up!
ROCK ON!
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Interesting
"Martensite has a lower density than ferrite, so that the transformation between phases often results in a relative change of volume: this can be seen vividly in the Japanese Katana, which is straight before quenching. Differential quenching causes martensite to form predominantly in the edge of the blade rather than the back; as the edge expands, the blade takes on a gently curved shape."
-Wikipedia article on martensite
That's pretty cool, didn't realise it was straight at first. Gotta be tricky to get it to curve exactly right. Niftiest thing I've learned from this materials engineering stuff so far.
"Martensite has a lower density than ferrite, so that the transformation between phases often results in a relative change of volume: this can be seen vividly in the Japanese Katana, which is straight before quenching. Differential quenching causes martensite to form predominantly in the edge of the blade rather than the back; as the edge expands, the blade takes on a gently curved shape."
-Wikipedia article on martensite
That's pretty cool, didn't realise it was straight at first. Gotta be tricky to get it to curve exactly right. Niftiest thing I've learned from this materials engineering stuff so far.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Another World
I've just been writing up my report for physics on the SEM, or Scanning Electron Microscope. In the course of my research I naturally found my way to wikipedia, where I found some awesome pictures taken with an SEM. The one used must have been so much better than the one steve and I used, some of the stuff had a resolution of 36000x. Steve and I were amazed when we got a clear picture at 5000x. Check out the wikipedia article on it sometime, for the pictures if nothing else. Also follow a few of the external links to pictures, there are some great ones there too. Here's a couple of my favourites (be sure to click for enlarged versions):
Snowflake magnification series
Assorted Pollen
Ant
The way the SEM works is actually pretty interesting, and also quite simple in principle, I'd say most non-physics people should still be able to understand it pretty easily (simple, but pretty freaking tricky to actually constuct I'd say). It's also quite brilliant.
Basically it shoots a beam of electrons down on a sample, focused really, really tightly (focused onto a spot approx 1-5 nm across) using magnetic fields, which causes some interactions to occur and electrons to be emitted from the sample. These are then detected by an instrument which decides how bright that particular pixel of the image should be based mostly on how many electrons it counts. Yes, just the one pixel. The beam is then moved a tiny bit to repeat the process for the next pixel, doing this again and again (like a tv), scanning over a section of the sample. Of course it does all this very quickly, scanning the whole section around 30 times per second. Pretty impressive really. Surface angles and different elevations affect the number of electrons that come flying off the surface, giving good surface contrast, so you get a really nifty 3D looking image.
Actually when you take the final image it does the scanning a lot more slowly, so you get a much higher resolution picture than the one on the tiny real-time monitor.
I've just been writing up my report for physics on the SEM, or Scanning Electron Microscope. In the course of my research I naturally found my way to wikipedia, where I found some awesome pictures taken with an SEM. The one used must have been so much better than the one steve and I used, some of the stuff had a resolution of 36000x. Steve and I were amazed when we got a clear picture at 5000x. Check out the wikipedia article on it sometime, for the pictures if nothing else. Also follow a few of the external links to pictures, there are some great ones there too. Here's a couple of my favourites (be sure to click for enlarged versions):
Snowflake magnification series
Assorted Pollen
Ant
The way the SEM works is actually pretty interesting, and also quite simple in principle, I'd say most non-physics people should still be able to understand it pretty easily (simple, but pretty freaking tricky to actually constuct I'd say). It's also quite brilliant.
Basically it shoots a beam of electrons down on a sample, focused really, really tightly (focused onto a spot approx 1-5 nm across) using magnetic fields, which causes some interactions to occur and electrons to be emitted from the sample. These are then detected by an instrument which decides how bright that particular pixel of the image should be based mostly on how many electrons it counts. Yes, just the one pixel. The beam is then moved a tiny bit to repeat the process for the next pixel, doing this again and again (like a tv), scanning over a section of the sample. Of course it does all this very quickly, scanning the whole section around 30 times per second. Pretty impressive really. Surface angles and different elevations affect the number of electrons that come flying off the surface, giving good surface contrast, so you get a really nifty 3D looking image.
Actually when you take the final image it does the scanning a lot more slowly, so you get a much higher resolution picture than the one on the tiny real-time monitor.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
So much to do, so little time
This applies to the work I have to do over the break, for which I will be away for about 5 days of :p.
Though what I was actually thinking of was all the maths units that I want to do, which it is physically impossible to do with my current course structure. I could probably manage it if I add an extra semester to my course (not cool).
Maths units to do:
ASP3012 Stars and galaxies
ASP3051 Relativity and cosmology
MTH3011 Partial differential equations
MTH3021 Complex analysis and integral transforms
MTH3122 Algebra and number theory I
MTH3132 Analysis and geometry
MTH3140 Real analysis
MTH3150 Algebra and number theory II
MTH3360 Fluid dynamics
One of those I'm doing now, another 3 I have pencilled into my course plan, leaving 5 of them in limbo (those middle five). Not sure I can jam those in in any reasonable fashion. They look so cool though, they're all really pure maths sorts of subjects, which is really deep. Actually I found that if I want a major in pure mathematics then I only need to do two of those five, which I could do If I ditch the fluid dynamics for instance. It wouldn't really feel like a pure maths major to me though, without those other things.
Mostly I've developed an interest in those topics because of the special maths topic that Steve and I do. It's really nuts but it's interesting too, and I'd like to learn more about it and related topics, which would be the algebra topics listed above. Those and the complex analysis are the important ones to do I think. Of course I don't want to leave those astrophysics units out either, gotta learn about relativity and black holes and such. Maybe I should be doing a science degree without this engineering junk. That would free up the space required. I need the engineering for my baloon craft though, so I'm not eager to throw that away. But the mathematics is important too, it's like the underlying theory behind everything.
I wonder if my brain will eventually explode from trying to cram too much stuff in there.
This applies to the work I have to do over the break, for which I will be away for about 5 days of :p.
Though what I was actually thinking of was all the maths units that I want to do, which it is physically impossible to do with my current course structure. I could probably manage it if I add an extra semester to my course (not cool).
Maths units to do:
ASP3012 Stars and galaxies
ASP3051 Relativity and cosmology
MTH3011 Partial differential equations
MTH3021 Complex analysis and integral transforms
MTH3122 Algebra and number theory I
MTH3132 Analysis and geometry
MTH3140 Real analysis
MTH3150 Algebra and number theory II
MTH3360 Fluid dynamics
One of those I'm doing now, another 3 I have pencilled into my course plan, leaving 5 of them in limbo (those middle five). Not sure I can jam those in in any reasonable fashion. They look so cool though, they're all really pure maths sorts of subjects, which is really deep. Actually I found that if I want a major in pure mathematics then I only need to do two of those five, which I could do If I ditch the fluid dynamics for instance. It wouldn't really feel like a pure maths major to me though, without those other things.
Mostly I've developed an interest in those topics because of the special maths topic that Steve and I do. It's really nuts but it's interesting too, and I'd like to learn more about it and related topics, which would be the algebra topics listed above. Those and the complex analysis are the important ones to do I think. Of course I don't want to leave those astrophysics units out either, gotta learn about relativity and black holes and such. Maybe I should be doing a science degree without this engineering junk. That would free up the space required. I need the engineering for my baloon craft though, so I'm not eager to throw that away. But the mathematics is important too, it's like the underlying theory behind everything.
I wonder if my brain will eventually explode from trying to cram too much stuff in there.
