Experiments in Life

Okay, today it looks like I’m just pasting links, but this one is totally worth it! I am trying to help celebrate 50,000 hits on the DSN (Deep-Sea News) site. I love this site for all of its nerdiness. So, if the ocean interests you in any way, even just a tiny bit, check out this site. It’s filled with lots of interesting facts and general information,especially the posts on 25 Things You Should Know About the Deep Sea, as well as some really cool pictures.

Did I mention I was a deep sea nerd

Anyway, go and check it out and bring up the hit count!

Go DSN

Deep-Sea News

I thought this was a pretty interesting article. But then again, I’m such a nerd for these kinds of things

Grammar revealed in a whale’s love song

Enjoy

Some people fight for honor. Some fight for glory. Some fight to save a princess. I am the third kind. I carry a sword. Now it is time to venture into the mystical land of Hyrule once more to battle against the forces of evil, old school.

It took me a while, but I finally was able to get my hands on a copy of the Legend of Zelda: Collector’s Edition for the GameCube. Now, I have the two NES Zelda games and the two N64 Zelda games for the GC. I was a little disappointed that it did not come with the SNES version of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but since Ashley’s SNES still works, I may see if I can track that down at some point. After an 80’s retrospective conversation with some friends on Thursday night, I felt a need to play some classic Zelda again. I have not played the Wind Waker version of Zelda for the GC yet, but I will probably pick that up this summer to prepare for the upcoming release of Twilight Princess this fall.

Games have come a long way in the past 20 years.

I just finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley again. I saw this made for TV movie back in 1999 when it came out, but I have been doing a lot of reading about the making of the original Macintosh lately and I wanted to rewatch the video to see if I get a different perspective. Pirates of Silicon Valley is about the startup of Apple Computers and Microsoft. For the computer hackers and visionaries of the day, that was an exciting time period. Personal computing as we know it simply did not exist at the time — the companies headed by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates molded the personal computer into their own visions.

In retrospective, it was truly a great time for the computer hobbyist. A personal computer was something that one could create at home and have it be completely unique and yet at least as powerful as any of the other personal computers of the time. In the present day, computer hardware is so complicated that the hobbyist has to cross a significant barrier of entry for creating anything new and different The software world is the new frontier of the computing arena — hence, the dot-com boom of the late Nineties was born.

Sometimes I wonder what the next big thing on the horizon will be. Is it ubiquitous computing, computers that are so commonplace that we do not even realize that we are using them? Computers trends are leaning towards that direction, from computers the size of a room to computers the size of a handheld notebook. Is it some new form of user interface, augmenting the graphical and command line interfaces? Work is being done towards an auditory interface using technology like voice recognition and voice synthesis. Where can the hobbyists of today work to make an impact in the computing platforms of tomorrow?

These questions seem to stay in my mind more and more these days as I try to figure out what I really want to be doing with my life. Currently, I am very interested in programming language theory and in operating system design but neither of these interests are very revolutionary. Am I just not visionary? Does this mean that I just do not have what it takes to change the world? In the movie, Bill Gates says something like you have to figure out what someone needs, but does not realize that he needs, and then sell it to them. Are the ideas really so visionary or is it just being in the right place at the right time?

Don’t you hate it when songs get stuck in your head for no reason whatsoever? It has been around two weeks since I went to go see the musical Evita and all of a sudden, the main song of the performance has jump straight into my head and refuses to leave. It has not been there for the past two weeks, so I do not know what makes today so special. Sometimes, I wonder if songs get stuck in my head because my mind is not working hard enough. I know that when I am really, really busy, my mind stays focused on the task at hand and the radio station that is my brain is quiet for a while. Lately, though, it seems like my brain is working non-stop to keep me entertained with showtunes. “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” is just the latest song to burst onto the scenes.

I think this, along with the urges to stay up late at night reading, must be signs that I am not being challenged enough. Well, since the books that I have been waiting for have finally come in, I have started trying to rectify (insert obligatory EE joke here) my boredom. I started on Essentials of Programming Languages during lunch today. This, along with the slew of novels I am slowly working my way through, ought to occupy my mind for a while once I get into it. Until then “Don’t cry for me Argentina…”

As I am sitting at computer in my office, I cannot help but to look at the books that are sitting on my corner computer desk, just waiting for me to dive into them. The only problem is, I am not sure which subject I want to study first. I have an interest in all of the subjects — otherwise I would not have gotten the books. Here is what I am considering:

1. Math Books
• Introduction to Topology
• Algebraic Structures
• The Theory of Groups
2. Robotics Books
• Robot Builder’s Bonanza
• Build Your Own Robot!
• Sensors for Mobile Robots
3. Computer Science Books
• The Art of Computer Programming: Funamental Algorithms
• Lisp In Small Pieces (coming soon)
• Essentials of Programming Languages (coming soon)
4. Any of my electronics books (at work)

I picked most of these up when I found them on sale at Barnes and Noble. To be honest, I will probably start in on EoPL or LiSP when they come in — I have been fairly excited about getting them. However, I have really started to notice how many of my E.E. skills have fallen off through disuse, so I may start up a side project to try and brush up on Basic Circuit Analysis and Electronic Circuit Analysis before I try to move into teaching myself anything new (in the field that I just received a Master’s degree in… and I need to brush up on the basics).

– Disclaimer –

These are not the only books that I read, in case anyone gets too worried about me. I do read novels (in the middle of one now) and other non-fiction books beside nerd-books.

Over on Presentation Zen this morning, there is a post on the high points of Steve Job’s keynote presentation. While I agree with the points that the author makes, the thing that blew me away was the picture in point three. It is a capture of a slide from the presentation talking about the new features in Apple’s Keynote presentation software. It highlights the new image reflection feature that in Keynote that is just plain cool.

Woot! This is way cool!

Scientists discover new hydrothermal vents

For those of you who are wondering why I think this is so cool, I did my masters thesis research on bacteria living in hydrothermal vents. I’ve touched the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean…indirectly of course, the dirt came to me

Here are a couple of links to articles I found that you might be interested in. It looks like chimpanzees may be more predatory than one would think. They also hunt for reasons other than food. Both articles are written by the same guy, so sorry if there is a ton of overlap. Hope these interest you and help you come up with some answers, and hopefully more questions.

I’m going to turn you into a biologist yet

Chimpanzee hunting and Behavior and Human Evolution

The Predatory Behavior and Ecology of Wild Chimpanzees

This next article talks about where Oliver came from. Just read the part about Oliver the chimp and ignore the rest. I know that Oliver is an actual chimp with strange habits. However, I am unsure as to whether or not the “ape-woman” was real

Amazing Missing links

A brief lesson in biology:
You might be interested to know where the term Humanzee came from. It’s like Chuman, but slightly different. Basically, it’s like the liger and tiglin (yes, these are real hybrids). The naming schema used is the following: first part of sire’s name + second part of dam’s name . A Chuman is thus a male chimpanzee crossed with a female human. Therefore, a Humanzee or Manpanzee (nope, I’m really not making this up!), is a male human crossed with a female chimpanzee.

For more information on Oliver or the Manpanzee (I think that one is my favorite!), please follow the link below.

Chuman

Oh how I love Wikipedia

Well, there you have it folks. I finally posted…sort of. There were still lots of links involved, but, I have to wean myself off of them…slowly, very slowly. Hope you enjoyed today’s biology lesson. Stayed tune for more on the wonderful, mysterious world of biology

Sometimes I wonder why I do not sleep at night. Some nights the reason is blazingly obvious — thoughts like the following take root in my mind and will not let go. Recently, I finished reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. I enjoyed it so such that I plan on reading The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, also by Jared Diamond. Looking at the book on our bookshelf has started me thinking about how humans evolved — specifically, how humans evolved binocular vision with eyes in the front of the head like predators have instead of on the side of the head like most prey animals have. Now, I should state that I accept that chimpanzees are the species that is genetically closest to humans. However, I do not necessarily consider chimpanzees to be predators — although I admit that this subject is not something that I have studied extensively.

Based on these beliefs, I began to wonder where the primate line came from if:

1. primates truely are not predators and
2. primates have eyes in a predatory configuration.

I know that, given a DNA sequence of all mammalian species on Earth and enough calculation time, one could determine how closely related any one species is from any other species by comparing the overlap in the DNA sequences. Now, the following is what kept me up half the night:
would it be possible to approximate, within a million years or so, how long ago the species diverged? I think that a model could be devised that takes into account:

1. the percentage of DNA in common between the species,
2. the average amount of radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface,
3. the average number of mutations to DNA
   that occur per unit of radiation,
4. the average number of mutations that are passed on, and
5. the probability that the mutation will be “beneficial.”

This will probably be something that I will mull over in the back of my mind for several days.