January 14, 2013  Comments Off on INCEPTION!!!

January 7, 2013  Tagged with: , , , , , ,  Comments Off on A Void – Black Bird

July 2, 2012  Tagged with: , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Going Home to Celebrate Independence Day
I'll be home for the holiday to take some much needed time off of work at Dow. My time here has been outstanding so far! But, a little relaxation will help keep me going the second half of the summer. I miss my family and friends back home. As a convenience (to myself) I've found a nifty countdown plugin and added a countdown to my arrival in Gainesville after the jump.

May 23, 2012  Tagged with: , , ,
YouTube has just broken a whopping 72 hours of uploaded video per minute. Think about that. Every minute, three days of new video is added to, arguably, the largest such centralized repository of freely available video content. That is HUGE. That also brings up a few questions given the strenuous legal climate over the past decade. How such a monument to human creativity and curiosity will continue to survive without imploding under the strain of opposing human drives is largely a guessing game at this point. On the one hand, there is the self-evident natural will to create, innovate, remix, refine, renew, and share the endeavors of ourselves and others. On the other hand, there is also the similarly well intended and quite reasonable craving to retain proof and pride in the fruits of one's labor, either through the direct capacity to demonstrate said results or via the more abstract means of equitable exchange for other produced goods. In the latter case, money usually suits the purpose rather well. In an attempt to adequately construct a balanced framework for these natural tendencies to promote a benefit to the community, the founding fathers remained intentionally vague when they wrote the copyright clause. They left it to the people to derive the meaning of "Progress of Science and the useful Arts." At the time of writing it was meant to imply a restricted means for disseminating the labors of the booming fields of philosophy (lest we forget science began, and remains, as natural philosophy) and mechanical innovation to the public while reserving for those who labored a brief time to adequately profit from said work. Since this time, the meaning of the clause has been reinterpreted as an automatic entitlement to the use and reuse of all created works nigh in perpetuity. The copyright term for anything created today includes the life of the creator(s) plus 70 years. (/rant) In light of this refreshed context, YouTube's success seems a little more intimidating. While several organizations see YouTube as a threat to be sued and/or shamed out of existence (RIAA/MPAA/etc.), there are thankfully protections in place (fair use) for the rights of those they would happily squelch to see their goals met. Under the DMCA, the notice and take down system, while not perfect, has been tempered with the power of a fair use counter notice. Beyond these steps for settling a dispute over content, the accuser sues the accused in a court of law. The determination of copyright infringement, in general, has been found to require the ruling of a judge. Now, with all of this in mind, YouTube might reasonably be wondering how cost effective it would be to work with purported defenders of artists' rights to accommodate for the rights of copyright holders. Well, lets begin with the rate of content being uploaded, $\displaystyle R$. $\displaystyle R=\frac{\partial t_v}{\partial t}=\frac{t_v}{t}=72\cfrac{\text{hours}}{\text{minute}}$ Converting this to its natural dimensionless units will help when it is split up. $\displaystyle R=72\cfrac{\text{hours}}{\text{minute}}\times 60\cfrac{\text{minutes}}{\text{hours}}$

February 14, 2012  Tagged with: , ,
When I took my process thermodynamics course as an undergraduate student, I was told to use what I had initially considered to be a completely redundant notation for partial derivatives for thermodynamic potentials.  The notation involved wrapping the partial derivative in a set of parentheses and noting which variables were "held constant" as a subscript. Ex. $\displaystyle\left(\frac{\partial P}{\partial V}\right)_{T,\vec{N}}$ The derivation leading to this was woefully devoid of the mathematical basis for this apparently redundant notation.  Furthermore, so was the general literature on the subject, most of which consisted of fleeting introductions to their respective application.  As I played with the idea, it became clear why this notation was indeed very necessary.  It was only as I was solving a separate problem on my own that such notation yielded valuable information about the nature of the potentials being described.

February 7, 2012  Tagged with: , , , ,  Comments Off on A Great Tool for Visualizing Disk Space
I've been using this free tool called "Folder Size" (download available here) for a while now. It is a very impressive piece of (free) software that scans the entirety of a selected drive and produces an empirical picture of the distribution of occupied drive space. I have found this to be to be invaluable when cleaning out my disk space as it allows me to see the effective size of folders as well as files. The ability to natively view the size of a folder in explorer has been missing from MS Windows since its inception. Originally, I stumbled upon this application while attempting to address that specific concern, which it does. Beyond displaying the size of folders, it also shows the relative sizes of all items at the same branch of the drive hierarchy in both a percent column in the analysis results and a graphical display below as well as detailed file and folder attributes. Some of the options for the data displayed are type of visualization and default size basis (think KB, MB, GB, etc.). I highly recommend this software if you are going through the "where did all my disk space go?!?!?" routine.

January 16, 2012  Comments Off on Old Work to be Posted Over the Next Few Months
Over the next few months I will be posting about many of the independent projects and research projects I did as an undergraduate.  They range from metabolic models to full process designs and cover a diverse selection of chemical engineering principles, several with significant real world applications.  Starting things off will be a walk through of a proof I wrote in response to a test grade I did not agree with and how the results of the proof may be used both to simplify and enhance a graphical method for predicting distillation column behavior.  This proof will be the basis for a paper I will be writing on the subject as well.

January 10, 2012  Tagged with: , , , , ,  Comments Off on Skiing Vacation in Utah, Day 6 and Return Home
Well, I am back home and I had a fantastic time skiing with my family and friends.  It was nice to be able to spend time with them without the looming stress of going back to class hanging over my head.  Now its just finishing up graduate school applications. The last day on the mountain was a lot of fun, though a little wearing.  We skied from ~9am until ~8pm, and the slopes were wide open (my guess is most people were still hung over from new year's eve) for most of the day. I also took a video while going down the Payday run.  Unfortunately, its a bit large and I'll need to compress it before posting it.  It starts about 50ft down from the top of the lift and ends a bit after I end back at the bottom of the lift.  It should probably be watched without the sound on.  This wasn't my fastest run, but I was a little tired and I was worried I might crash and lose my (crappy) camera.  I'll have the video up when I get the time to pare it down to a manageable size. The flight home was rather uneventful, but it was nice to finally be back in town.

January 1, 2012  Tagged with: , , , , ,  Comments Off on Skiing Vacation in Utah, Days 4 and 5
Day 4 was a day to stay up the mountain.  Even though there was a little snow from the previous night, it quickly mixed in with the slush.  We avoided the slush near the base by exploring the McConkey area, but there was only a couple runs and no bowls open.  Unfortunately, the McConkey area was also a bit rocky.  Day 5 was great, there was a bit of fresh snow from the night before and brief flurries in the morning.  Thankfully, it was cold enough that most of the new snow stayed powder.

December 29, 2011  Tagged with: , , , , ,  Comments Off on Skiing Vacation in Utah, Days 2 and 3
Well, the second day was awesome.  I got to hit the slopes from 9am to 2pm then 5pm to 8pm.  What a long day and night on a "bald mountain." In other news, today it rained and it was decided that skiing down slush and rock would be rather unpleasant...

December 27, 2011  Tagged with: , , , , ,  Comments Off on Skiing Vacation in Utah, Day 1
It's been a day and I've already carved up a third of Park City. There isn't much snow out here, but there's supposedly some on the way soon.  I took a couple pictures a ways up the mountain (see gallery below).  It was a fantastic view, but it wasn't the snow covered peaks I was hoping for.  I'll throw some more pictures up here in future posts as my vacation continues.

December 21, 2011  Tagged with: , , ,  Comments Off on Wow… So, I’ve Finally Graduated
Its kind of surreal. I've been expecting this day for a couple years, but it still feels a bit premature. I'd like to take this moment to say thank you to everyone who helped me along the way. From advisers to family to fellow students, you've supported me along the way and that means as much to me as your cheers of approval when I switched my tassel over to the left. That kind of thankless altruism is inspiring. What I've earned: B.S.Ch.E. Chemical Engineering, Magna Cum Laude B.S. Chemistry, Cum Laude

December 12, 2011  Tagged with: , , , , ,  Comments Off on Another Study of Light Path Geometry

December 9, 2011  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  Comments Off on Study of Light Paths in a Fluorescent Medium
This time I used a bottle of tonic water with my 405nm laser.  The quinine in the tonic water is fluorescent and glows with a bright blue color under UV light.  It also clearly displays where the light path is.

December 8, 2011  Tagged with: , , ,  Comments Off on Fluid Dynamics in a Rocks Glass
So I was intrigued by how clearly I could see thermal counter diffusion gradients in my whiskey, and I took a bunch of pictures of it.  The shape of my rocks glass did a great job diffracting the light from my computer monitor, which incidentally emphasized the density and refractive index differences at the surfaces of the protruding fingers of cold water.

December 8, 2011  Tagged with: , , ,  Comments Off on Strawberry Caramel… Or Brittle
Step 1: Add a bunch of extra sugar to some cut up strawberries.  Then add water in slight excess of that which would be required to form a saturated sugar water solution at the refrigerator's temperature.  This keeps the strawberry slices from fully dehydrating and saturates them with the syrup the strawberry enzymes make by the time the syrup is collected. (Collect underpants) Step 2: Wait a while. (???) Step 3: Collect the strawberry syrup and enjoy the sweetened strawberries. (Profit!) Step 4: Boil the strawberry syrup with a very small amount of added butter or oil until you end up with a caramel.  Don't over do it unless you want to make a brittle instead. Step 5: Pour out the hot caramel and wait for it to cool down to cut it up into small pieces. Step 6: Get frustrated when you realize you forgot to lay out confectioners sugar on the cookie sheet before pouring a hot and sticky substance on it. Step 7: Break up the cooled mass into bite size pieces.

December 8, 2011  Tagged with: , , ,  Comments Off on While I Was Outside This Summer
I decided to look around.  The first thing I saw was a slug, then there was a whole bunch of other stuff.

December 8, 2011  Tagged with: , ,  Comments Off on OCRAp
And this is why you're supposed to tend to a garden...

December 8, 2011  Tagged with: , ,  Comments Off on Gallery of Preparation of Awesome Salmon
This is a preparation of some of my awesome salmon.  It was delicious.  I'll likely post a recipe for this when I get the time.

December 8, 2011  Tagged with: ,  Comments Off on A Progression of Bell Peppers
The first of a bunch of old photo sets I have to share, this is a brief progression of bell peppers from cutting board to bowl.