My favorite quote from today

My favorite quote from today. "Because if Elliot Spitzer can get up, brush himself off and go running in a city that laughs at him after resigning from office due to a high class prostie scandal, then I can do that too....minus the prosties, and pretty much everything else. So I did! It was a good run and an even more interesting morning!" It comes from Reagan... good one Reag!

The past

I got an email from Alex H. yesterday regarding a this video we put together a few years ago. We used to make the new undergraduate researchers watch it under the pseudonym "Safety Video". It is really silly, but it reminds me of some good times, and some great friends. Alex now works for himself in the start-up NUB labs. They do a lot of cool things. The coolest thing is that Alex is moving forward with his ideas. He isn't afraid to get out there and do what he has always talked about. It is quite contagious actually. Enjoy the video and check out their website.

I love high speed photography

I really love taking pictures of things that happen quickly. If that involves fluid dynamics I usually like it even more. This past week we took a whole bunch of really cool milk drop images that I need to post. Here are a few of my favorites. Our newest graduate student said that she sees why we like what we do so much. I guess it helps to have the right equipment too! These aren't quite exactly what I have in mind for the perfect shot, so I hope to take a couple more next week and get things just right. All of these photos were taken with a Canon 20D, Nikon 105 mm macro lens with Canon adapter, 580 speedlight flash, and a Timemachine timing box with infrared trigger. One of the interesting things you can do with a photo shoot like this one is try to take a series of drops at different stages of imact to get a sense of what happens at impact (that is the method that Worthington used, who was the first person to photograph water and milk droplet impacts). Another fun thing to do is compare and contrast the differences between a drop of milk hitting a surface like the one above, and a milk drop landing into a pool of milk. The difference is quite phenomenal.

Reach the Beach

Last weekend I was able to have one of the best runs of my life. I ran two 10 km races and a 5 km race all within 20 hours. Twelve of us signed up to run the Reach the Beach relay race, which runs from the White Mountains in New Hampshire to Hampton Beach. 209 miles total, with everyone running 3 legs of this 24 hour endurance race! We started on Friday afternoon at 3:30 pm and ended a little before 6pm on Saturday! What a strange feeling it was. I was the eleventh runner so I was really anxious to run for over 7 hours while I drove and waited to run my first leg. It began at 11:30 pm and I ran harder than I ever have and recorded my best 10 km time of 46:16 min by my watch. That is just a little under 7:30 min/mile! Really a fantastic pace for myself. Then I felt sick and tried to sleep for two hours before our van had to move on again. At 6:30 am I was running again and this time completed a 6.3 mile course in 48:26, which is just a little slower than the previous times... still not bad for going on 24 hours without having slept more than 2 hours! Everyone else was running so well I felt pressure to bust out as fast as possible. When my final run at about 4:00 rolled around, I was primed to run all out. it was only 3.1 miles so I knew I could just waste myself. I got the wrist bracelet (like the baton) and ran as hard as I could. 8 minutes later I heard honking from our van. I figured they were cheering my amazing pace onward. Every time there is an exchange the van passes the runners (usually about 12 minutes after they begin) and they go the next stop to exchange runners or sometimes stop at the half way point to cheer them on. This time though my team was trying to tell me I had gone the wrong way! I had missed the turn while exchanging the wrist bracelet. It was an honest mistake. Immediately after the exchange you had to cross the street and take a right. I was so excited to bust out the 3.1 miles I just ducked my head down and started to pump my legs into action as I tried to find a nice rhythm. I turned around and began running back. All told I think I lost about 1.5 miles of ground, but I ran really hard and passed a few people on the way back. I felt really bad, but I ran what felt like a really fast pace. Either way everyone had a great time, and we were all exhausted. Will I do it again next year? Honestly, I hope we don't live here next year! By that I mean I really hope I graduate in the next few months. Enjoy the pictures.

Perhaps the best hike ever.

Pictures.
Last weekend was amazing. It began late on Thursday driving to New Hampshire's White Mountains to hike the Presidential Range. We arrived around 7, made camp went to dinner, then drove 40 minutes south to drop off a car and pick up some of our other hikers. We slept the night in a campground that only lets 4 people camp per site, others can join you for a fee of $10 per person per night.... New Hampshire apparently needs the income, without a state tax how can you blame them I guess? Aside from that little hiccup everything went perfectly. We woke to a beautiful sunrise around 5:30 am, headed to the trail head and hiked up to the base of Mt. Madison, by Mt. Quincy Adams, over Mt. Adams, past Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Clay, up Mt. Washington (largest in the region), down and over Mt. Monroe, Franklin, Eisenhower, and Pierce. All told 19.1 - 19.8 miles! And it only took us 13 hours 5 minutes! Not bad for a bunch of old desk workers! Eat that commadore 64. We went back to camp for some chili, smore's, and sleep. The drive back on Saturday was fun and we found a great spot for root beer. The pictures are also up so please enjoy them here. The weather was amazing, Washington was shrouded in mist that slowly ebbed and flowed from the peak. The sun was out most of the day, and the temperature was in the upper 50's and lower 60's which made the trip perfect. The second half of the trip was a lot easier than the first half, but everyone hiked like champs and I think our pace was really fast. I even enjoyed a swim at Lake of the Clouds. The AMC has a bunch of huts up their which make it unnecessary to bring a tent. If you are interested I think that is the way to go but you have to make reservations.

Work is going great. I am answering the last of the comments I got back last week on my first peer reviewed paper, and I hope I can send it back to the editors the first of next week. I talked to a few people at different Universities last week and am going to apply for a few faculty positions in the next week or two. I also found a couple more post-doc grants that look like they might fit into some of the ideas that I have had either on my own or with other people. Of course, if they involve others I have to contact them, which I have begun. Other than that, the thesis is on the top of my mind constantly. I plan on working a bit later today, but the weekends have become sort of sacred. I try to spend them with family and some time on the resume / website if I get time. Oh I almost forgot, I was invited to speak at Mathworks in October. That is the company that makes matlab, a program that I use constantly! I am excited to talk to them about how useful their product is and give them some feedback on some things I would like to see added (i.e. drop the ugly java interface, and improve the plotting functionality!). Honestly the product is awesome, my comments are mostly asthetic and lets face it superficial, way to go matlab you rock. Now if I can just manage to keep my productivity at a level where I finish this darn thing before 2008 is over so I don't have to change the date on my ring!

I guess I should underline the importance of getting this first paper published. It isn't my first, but it is my first peer reviewed, longer than one page, and is setting the stage for the next couple to go out the door. What it means is that I could potentially get an academic job now. I am by no means the most qualified or most prolific of my peers, but having one major contribution out thier for people to see makes it a lot easier for me to get an interview and etc... Of course, I will be competing against a few hundred other nerds and that means I have to keep my fingers crossed, prepare well, and hope I get a few interviews. Devine providence will play a role I am sure.

Discovery Channel photos

I know I can't stop talking about the Discovery Channel visit.  Perhaps it was the fact that the gratification of a job well done was so quick... whatever it was I managed to post a few photos as well as put one here.  The shoot was so much fun, and as everyone that week kept saying "no pun intended".  This week I spent time trying to catch up and now that it is the beginning of a new week I am also trying to catch up..... 

Scratch that.  I have actually been really productive.  Despite the three surgeries, kids going crazy, parenting, working on three projects at work at once, taking pictures and organizing backups, maintaining relationships and still managing to run 7-12 miles a week, oh and organize a big hiking trip, I would say I am actually being really productive.  Perhaps my thesis isn't as far a long as I planned (remember I wanted to graduate in May), the thesis is moving along in a really nice direction I think.  I am still working on the bullet chapter, but I think when it is all done it will turn into a really nice paper.  The only stone in the way I am not looking forward to is trying to figure out what to say and write one more paper that includes the 300 or so drops of the many different mass ratio spheres I did this past January.   I was actually impressed that this year I basically took all of the data and processed 4 times more information than I did in the two years previous!  That probably doesn't mean anything to anyone reading this, but for me this is really just a big self esteem booster to keep me going.  None the less I am going to need all of the help I can get to finish this thing by January!  

And as always there is someone I met that is doing three times as many things as I am and four times as successful.  I of course compare myself to them, and wish I was doing what they are doing, and am in total awe at their awesomeness!  But alas, I sin in my wish.  I hope your last week before classes begin is a great one!

Discovery Channel

A lot of people are starting to anticipate my graduation. It seems like everyone I know asks me when my defense date will be. No matter who it is I say something like "I am pretty sure it will be around December". Do I really know? I will bet my committee would say otherwise, based on my most recent performance. But I keep hope alive by moving forward. A lot of exciting progress is being made. Two great things have happened on two fronts in the past two months.

The spinning sphere research has found more recognition (new mural going up in ME headquarters) and Brenden stumbled upon a fairly straightforward solution for curve fitting that is going to turn into a paper and resolve that part of my thesis! Thanks Brenden!

The bullet research has also moved in two directions. The first is that I was able to re-derive the model we have been using for the design process. A task I thought impossible two years ago. It took me roughly 3 weeks but I think it is really coming along nicely. More exciting though is that we were also recognized by the Discovery Channel and they came and filmed our experiment on Friday! I was informed of this opportunity just a week before hand and Rod and I worked very hard to get everything ready for their visit. There was a lot of machining and setup to get back in place for the shoot, and Rod put in some long and frustrating days in the machine shop. Thanks again Rod, you are incredible and I am sure we wouldn't have been ready without your help!

We had to get permission from the pistol coach Will Hart. He was terrific. When I called he said he had had a bad experience with a guy with the same program a year ago but that he would over look that for me and allow us to do the show. The ironic part was that although that particular jerk doesn't work for D.C. anymore (fired or something), the show title was the same. Thanks to Will for letting us move forward despite the past! Although it would have been fun to see Will give the guy a piece of his mind had he been there.

The day was amazing. The crew was extremely nice and I think things went really well. Of course, they had a bit of time to set things up and then things got busy. At times things were going quickly, then there were lots of long pauses, which were sometimes hard to just stand around with so many other things to do in the back of my mind. I was really glad that Alex could do most of the interviewing. She was a natural and it made me less stressed out knowing that I didn't have to worry about that part of things. I got a few moments though and it was fun to just see how they run a show like that.

I wasn't surprised that they wanted to create a sort of story to make the science a bit more interesting. However, it was strange to have to repeat things when they either missed them on camera or on the sound board, or if the director just wanted a second take. It was also strange to be "ghost interviewed". I don't know if that is the proper term but when I got excited a couple of times the director would take me aside and ask questions. They were usually pretty general but he didn't have a mic so it was like talking to a ghost interviewer, and it felt strange. I tried not to make things sound contrived but lets just say I could see them using those clips for some really lame statements. I can't wait to see how silly I look and sound. As you know I am a pretty excitable person and I just hope I didn't say something that isn't true or that comes across as dumb.

That all aside I met some great people the host Jeff Lieberman, and Mat were terrific, the whole crew was interesting and had some amazing stories of their own. Everyone seemed genuinely interested in our research, which was a bit flattering. The producer even stopped by for a few minutes and we talked about the research. Finally I met Wes Skiles who is an amazing director of photography, and he had some really great advice about careers and exploring science and the world without fear and with excitement. He really got my mind flowing with ideas for future projects... lets hope some of them become realities.

In all cases, I was thrilled and excited to be a part of it. Not to mention that the publicity should be a good thing. Here is the only photo I have right now of the event, more to come later. You can see me way in the back. It airs between Oct 13th and end of December. I will keep you posted when it will air exactly. The working title now is "Time Warp" and you can see some previews of episodes here.

Summer times

Summer has been productive and fun, although I wish I felt like I did when I jumped this 15'10".  I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but for somebody who has never long jumped before it felt like a long way.  Perhaps that is what my thesis will feel like when I am finished.  When I look around I am sure that it won't compare to some of the other feats at MIT around me, but it will feel like a long way for me.  Let's just hope I land soon, I am sort of getting burnt out on the writing thing.  

Here is my plan for those of you interested.  Finish my rough draft Sept. 1st.  On to my CV, website, and application filling out for most of Sept.  October I will have my last committee meeting (hopefully, it didn't go well in June!).  Then I will be editing the thesis and writing a paper or two before December.  November is APS in San Antonio.  And then the thesis defense in Dec. or Jan. hopefully before Christmas so that it will be a nice relaxing Christmas vacation, filled with dreams of sugar plums.

What is on the docket for this week?  More of the MIT bullet study chapter, and hopefully moving on to the stuff I did in Maryland.  I have some major edits left in two of the other chapters, and I still have to write the introduction and conclusions, but that is about it.... oh yea, I have a huge digital appendix to setup.  My goal is to make it completely html driven with videos and graphs linked to a large set of parameters that I used for doing the actual experiments.  If anyone has a great idea on how to automate the whole thing I look forward to your suggestions.