This past weekend after a tough day of exercising and falling asleep on the beach I headed up to Pasadena to see Eric before he headed off to the, well I'm not sure if it's the east coast or the mid west (for those who think I'm a really bad person - yes I know what city it is, just not sure how to classify it). Well, anyway, his new home for the next year. It was good to see him and it has been a lot of fun living near him. I'll miss him but I'm glad he'll get to live near Jess and do some interesting research. I'm also always very supportive of anyone doing research on a disease I could potentially get later in life. Oh, and thanks Eric for the stack of books and truck full of miscellaneous other stuff! Well, I don't like to post too much on the internet about other people's lives so I'll cut it off there.
I'm not sure where I heard about it, but Steve Carell is in a new move: Little Miss Sunshine. It's only playing in New York and LA for the next week or two, but I realized that I live near LA. So after Eric took off I headed over to hollywood to see it. Very funny! It'd definitely see it whenever it makes it to your city. It was also an interesting experience because I saw it at the Arclight Theater which is where they were holding the barnyard premier while I was there. No, I didn't see any of the festivities, they were going on while I was in the movie, but I listened to the paparazzi talk while I had lunch before the movie.
Finally I added An Inconvenient Truth to the list of books I've read. It was interesting to see how Gore presented the information and I was somewhat surprised by how much of an impact global warming has already had. Obviously, I know it's real, I just didn't know the facts on what the impact has been. While I found it interesting, I'd say if you already care about the environment then not much need to read it, although it might be interesting to flip through the last few pages that have suggestions on what you can do to help. If you don't care about the environment - THEN GO READ IT!
So I'm going to throw out an opinion I've been developing and I know it's not that original and it might be flawed so I'm interested to hear what people think. But here's the thought. Hybrid cars are nice. And for any given person it's better that they buy a fuel efficient car than not and typically hybrids are more efficient (although anyone who drives a hybrid SUV and lives far from work might want to pause before bragging). But here's my opinion as a society as a whole hybrids are nothing special. They for the most part at best double the gas milage. Doubling might sound good but really to save the environment I think we need to be talking about radical change, not some people using half as much gas. Something like 30% of the green house gasses in the US come from cars. And lets face it at best in the near future we're going to replace maybe 1/2 the cars on the road. People will be buying cars being used now for quite a while. Now if you took 15% of the emissions and made it almost go away, that would be huge. Say you got 90% more fuel efficient then you'd have eliminated 13.5% of the emissions in the US. And you could really move on to concentrating on the next highest offenders. But cutting it in half just isn't that interesting. Sure you drop 7.5% but there's still a lot left to be done. So this is getting long, but the idea is people shouldn't be all happy with hybrids, they should be demanding true radical change, not an iterative step. So feel free to tell me the thought is crap but as an engineer when I see a 2x change I shrug my shoulders, when I see a 10x change I take notice.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Cardiovascular Physiology
Just finished Cardiovascular Physiology by David Mohrman and Lois Heller. All I have to say is - holly crap why didn't anyone tell me that biology is really interesting!?!?
Ok, really I have a bit more to say than that. I started reading the book because I figured if I'm working on a defibrillator it would be nice to understand something about the heart. The first part that really drew me in was the electrical coordination of the heart. I was quite surprised to see that the heart uses a lot of the same electrical techniques and tricks as circuits I have worked on (or maybe the other way around). For an example: the heart increases the rate at which an electrical signal travels across it by putting a sharp spike at the front of a rectangular pulse. In electronics this is called pre-emphasis and an output driver that uses pre-emphasis is one of the last things I worked on at Teradyne. It is a common trick in high speed digital systems. In addition, the way the heart generates the pre-emphasis is by adding a sharp pulse to the normal signal and generates the pulse by using what is basically an AND gate with one input inverted and delayed from the other. This is a classic pulse generator which I've studied in 6.374 (Analysis and design of digital integrated circuits) for dual edge registers and is also a very cheap way to double the rate of a clock (although the duty cycle of the result isn't so hot).
There was some stuff about how the muscles actually contract which was interesting for a bit but then they lost me (the book is intended as a review for the USMLE so there were a number of things that went over my head). Then they got into the overall function. This was really interesting because I knew that at times more blood flows to one place than another but the book got into how that actually occurs. The part I found amazing is the complexity of the feedback loops involved in the cardiovascular system. Normally if an engineer sees more than a few feedback loops interacting he/she gets quite concerned, but the body has tons of them.
Then it got into what happens in various cases, such as exercise and when bad stuff happens. I knew that cardio workouts are good for the heart (hence the name...) but I didn't realize that weight lifting is also good for the heart but in a different way. In cardio the main issue the heart faces is pumping huge volumes of blood through the body. So during exercise the heart gets bigger and better at that activity. But when weight lifting, it takes a huge amount of pressure to get blood into the contracted muscle, so the heart has to get stronger and better at creating large pressures. I also didn't realize that stuff other than your heart helps to pump blood. Such as when muscles contract and relax they pump blood (mostly in the veins) and when you breathe the changes in pressure pump blood. This is part of the reason why standing still is uncomfortable - the blood in your veins in your leg builds up and you need to use your leg muscles to help pump the blood back up (the veins have one way valves which keep the blood going in the right direction - if you don't know why I think one way valves are super cool - ask me about 6.270 sometime).
Anyway I should stop rambling. If you wanted to know more than that you could just read the book (or those who didn't avoid biology probably already know). Also I should note that I know almost nothing about biology so anything I said in this post could be completely wrong.
Ok, really I have a bit more to say than that. I started reading the book because I figured if I'm working on a defibrillator it would be nice to understand something about the heart. The first part that really drew me in was the electrical coordination of the heart. I was quite surprised to see that the heart uses a lot of the same electrical techniques and tricks as circuits I have worked on (or maybe the other way around). For an example: the heart increases the rate at which an electrical signal travels across it by putting a sharp spike at the front of a rectangular pulse. In electronics this is called pre-emphasis and an output driver that uses pre-emphasis is one of the last things I worked on at Teradyne. It is a common trick in high speed digital systems. In addition, the way the heart generates the pre-emphasis is by adding a sharp pulse to the normal signal and generates the pulse by using what is basically an AND gate with one input inverted and delayed from the other. This is a classic pulse generator which I've studied in 6.374 (Analysis and design of digital integrated circuits) for dual edge registers and is also a very cheap way to double the rate of a clock (although the duty cycle of the result isn't so hot).
There was some stuff about how the muscles actually contract which was interesting for a bit but then they lost me (the book is intended as a review for the USMLE so there were a number of things that went over my head). Then they got into the overall function. This was really interesting because I knew that at times more blood flows to one place than another but the book got into how that actually occurs. The part I found amazing is the complexity of the feedback loops involved in the cardiovascular system. Normally if an engineer sees more than a few feedback loops interacting he/she gets quite concerned, but the body has tons of them.
Then it got into what happens in various cases, such as exercise and when bad stuff happens. I knew that cardio workouts are good for the heart (hence the name...) but I didn't realize that weight lifting is also good for the heart but in a different way. In cardio the main issue the heart faces is pumping huge volumes of blood through the body. So during exercise the heart gets bigger and better at that activity. But when weight lifting, it takes a huge amount of pressure to get blood into the contracted muscle, so the heart has to get stronger and better at creating large pressures. I also didn't realize that stuff other than your heart helps to pump blood. Such as when muscles contract and relax they pump blood (mostly in the veins) and when you breathe the changes in pressure pump blood. This is part of the reason why standing still is uncomfortable - the blood in your veins in your leg builds up and you need to use your leg muscles to help pump the blood back up (the veins have one way valves which keep the blood going in the right direction - if you don't know why I think one way valves are super cool - ask me about 6.270 sometime).
Anyway I should stop rambling. If you wanted to know more than that you could just read the book (or those who didn't avoid biology probably already know). Also I should note that I know almost nothing about biology so anything I said in this post could be completely wrong.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Roomba
Good thing I read how to survive a robot uprising...
Your order for 1 iRobot Roomba Sage with Convenience Pack (4110) on 07/17/2006 has been recently shipped via FEDEX.
I had been thinking about getting one and then it was up on woot.
Your order for 1 iRobot Roomba Sage with Convenience Pack (4110) on 07/17/2006 has been recently shipped via FEDEX.
I had been thinking about getting one and then it was up on woot.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
How to Survive a Robot Uprising
I just finished How to Survive a Robot Uprising. Well of all the books I've read, possible ever, this is the only one that will inevitably save my life one day. Yes, I did find out about this book from Akshai's blog. A PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon in robotics decided that not all of hollywood can be wrong so one day robots will eventually have an uprising. So he talked to robotics professors and experts about topics such as how to know when your robotic vacuum has decided to turn against you and in that case how best to defeat it. I will say there were some slow moments when he really dug more into the robotics than focusing on being funny but if you can read between the jokes there is some interesting info on the current state of robotics. But slow moments or not if you don't read the book won't you be sorry when your toaster and roomba join forces against you.
In other news - went to the beach today (surprise, surprise) and other than reading How to Survive a Robot Uprising, I watched the surfing competition they were holding by the pier. It was very cool to see some really good surfers - they were doing stuff like walking up and down the board to control it which I hadn't seen before and of course they were able to pull some cool moves. The waves weren't huge so they didn't do anything too crazy, but still fun to watch. At the same time they were running a few other random competitions. One of which involved paddling large canoes out into the ocean and back - not that exciting on its own, but when a good wave hit it would send people flying out of the canoe and then they would scramble to get it flipped back over and get back in (the first time I saw it I assumed the guy would just give up - as that's probably what I would do). Anyway, time to stop poorly describing stuff I saw today and go see pirates since if Hollywood tells me to see a movie enough times I can't exert enough self control to do otherwise.
In other news - went to the beach today (surprise, surprise) and other than reading How to Survive a Robot Uprising, I watched the surfing competition they were holding by the pier. It was very cool to see some really good surfers - they were doing stuff like walking up and down the board to control it which I hadn't seen before and of course they were able to pull some cool moves. The waves weren't huge so they didn't do anything too crazy, but still fun to watch. At the same time they were running a few other random competitions. One of which involved paddling large canoes out into the ocean and back - not that exciting on its own, but when a good wave hit it would send people flying out of the canoe and then they would scramble to get it flipped back over and get back in (the first time I saw it I assumed the guy would just give up - as that's probably what I would do). Anyway, time to stop poorly describing stuff I saw today and go see pirates since if Hollywood tells me to see a movie enough times I can't exert enough self control to do otherwise.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Books and stuff
First off what I've been reading since I got down to San Clemente. The sudden posting of what I've been reading has nothing to do with a recent entry to the world of blogging by someone else. There's no residual competition there at all... Really... (Actually I have been doing this for a while and let it drop off recently).
Breaking The Spell by Daniel C. Dennett: Very interesting! It looks at the phenomenon of religion scientifically and is making a call to others to do the same. Now this doesn't mean he's looking at how Moses made the river part, but rather why do people believe this and points out that most people actually just believe in believing in it. One of the most interesting parts is the discussion of religion as a meme. For those that don't know (like me before I read the book and looked into it) a meme is an idea that evolves just like animals evolve and also follows the rules of natural selection. This helps in looking at religions for what makes certain survive and some fade away. Some particularly interesting points are a theory of how very early religion began based on the human tendency to give human feelings to objects, and his arguments why religious people should not object to science studying religion. I'll let amazon explain further if you are interested.
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki: Good stuff for anyone looking to start a company or working at a start up. Otherwise it's fairly specific and probably not of general interest. Thanks Mom and Dad for the book. If you are involved with start ups I'd say check it out.
In the Line of Fire by Jerry Weissman: A how to on answering questions at presentations. Seems like great advice and also has some interesting commentary on politics and the influence of how candidates handle themselves at public speaking events. The one downside I see is it seems like for the advice to work it would require some practice, which as someone who doesn't give many presentations I'm not sure how well I could actually pull off his suggestions. Thanks again Mom and Dad for the book.
Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold: After reading the foundation series I decided that those Hugo people must know what they are talking about (even if they do have the worst website ever for a group based on nerdyness). I saw that Bujold had won multiple Hugo's so I decided to try one of her Hugo winners. I really hate to say this, but here it is - I realized while reading this book that I almost never read books written by women. Not that I'm against reading books by women, just as I look back I realize that I rarely do. This book did not encourage me to reverse the trend. I'm not really going to hold one book against all female authors. The first 200 pages were fairly good even if a bit slow, and being told from a women's perspective really didn't detract from it for me (a large part of one of my favorite series, Dune, is told from a woman's perspective, of course it's written by a man so maybe it doesn't count). But the next 400 pages which had a scifi background, were really about getting married and having a baby which didn't exactly suck me in (the real point isn't just my opinion - she says so in the afterward). I'll try something by a female author again one of these days, but next time I'll make sure the author's main interest isn't writing about starting a family.
Hmmm - don't really want to end on insulting half the human race so time to think of something else to say...
On Monday I went up to San Jose - if anyone in San Jose reads this, don't be insulted I didn't call, I flew in at 8 am and flew out at 8 pm (and flew from San Diego so yes that was a long day). I'm not completely certain, but I think this was the first time I've flown and had the origin and final destination in the same state. Wasn't up to anything too exciting up there, just went up to meet with some people that the company I work for works with. Well, the one interesting thing is that while I was there on Monday I was informed that I needed to get some info together for someone else to present to the CEO (as well as four other executives and my boss) on Tuesday. Then, on Tuesday, as we sat down for the meeting, I was informed that I should go ahead and present the part that I had prepared. I'm not really complaining because it's nice to have exposure to upper management, but there was some anxiety as I decided what to say while looking at most of the company's executive team.
A few random items:
I think that a few of Akshay's most recent posts are fairly interesting, especially the talks.
My Dad introduced me to woot. I'm yet to buy anything but I find it funny and know one of these days I'll actually pull out the credit card. Note: if you do become a woot fan you should move out to CA (well you should move to CA for many reasons) because midnight on the east coast is 9 pm on the west coast so it is easy to catch the items just after they are posted.
I never understood adults who got tired at 10 pm and said it's because they had to get up for work, but it's 10 pm and I'm tired because I have to get up for work.
Oh yeah - 4th of July - went to Laguna Beach with Eric and Evan and others - good time!
Breaking The Spell by Daniel C. Dennett: Very interesting! It looks at the phenomenon of religion scientifically and is making a call to others to do the same. Now this doesn't mean he's looking at how Moses made the river part, but rather why do people believe this and points out that most people actually just believe in believing in it. One of the most interesting parts is the discussion of religion as a meme. For those that don't know (like me before I read the book and looked into it) a meme is an idea that evolves just like animals evolve and also follows the rules of natural selection. This helps in looking at religions for what makes certain survive and some fade away. Some particularly interesting points are a theory of how very early religion began based on the human tendency to give human feelings to objects, and his arguments why religious people should not object to science studying religion. I'll let amazon explain further if you are interested.
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki: Good stuff for anyone looking to start a company or working at a start up. Otherwise it's fairly specific and probably not of general interest. Thanks Mom and Dad for the book. If you are involved with start ups I'd say check it out.
In the Line of Fire by Jerry Weissman: A how to on answering questions at presentations. Seems like great advice and also has some interesting commentary on politics and the influence of how candidates handle themselves at public speaking events. The one downside I see is it seems like for the advice to work it would require some practice, which as someone who doesn't give many presentations I'm not sure how well I could actually pull off his suggestions. Thanks again Mom and Dad for the book.
Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold: After reading the foundation series I decided that those Hugo people must know what they are talking about (even if they do have the worst website ever for a group based on nerdyness). I saw that Bujold had won multiple Hugo's so I decided to try one of her Hugo winners. I really hate to say this, but here it is - I realized while reading this book that I almost never read books written by women. Not that I'm against reading books by women, just as I look back I realize that I rarely do. This book did not encourage me to reverse the trend. I'm not really going to hold one book against all female authors. The first 200 pages were fairly good even if a bit slow, and being told from a women's perspective really didn't detract from it for me (a large part of one of my favorite series, Dune, is told from a woman's perspective, of course it's written by a man so maybe it doesn't count). But the next 400 pages which had a scifi background, were really about getting married and having a baby which didn't exactly suck me in (the real point isn't just my opinion - she says so in the afterward). I'll try something by a female author again one of these days, but next time I'll make sure the author's main interest isn't writing about starting a family.
Hmmm - don't really want to end on insulting half the human race so time to think of something else to say...
On Monday I went up to San Jose - if anyone in San Jose reads this, don't be insulted I didn't call, I flew in at 8 am and flew out at 8 pm (and flew from San Diego so yes that was a long day). I'm not completely certain, but I think this was the first time I've flown and had the origin and final destination in the same state. Wasn't up to anything too exciting up there, just went up to meet with some people that the company I work for works with. Well, the one interesting thing is that while I was there on Monday I was informed that I needed to get some info together for someone else to present to the CEO (as well as four other executives and my boss) on Tuesday. Then, on Tuesday, as we sat down for the meeting, I was informed that I should go ahead and present the part that I had prepared. I'm not really complaining because it's nice to have exposure to upper management, but there was some anxiety as I decided what to say while looking at most of the company's executive team.
A few random items:
I think that a few of Akshay's most recent posts are fairly interesting, especially the talks.
My Dad introduced me to woot. I'm yet to buy anything but I find it funny and know one of these days I'll actually pull out the credit card. Note: if you do become a woot fan you should move out to CA (well you should move to CA for many reasons) because midnight on the east coast is 9 pm on the west coast so it is easy to catch the items just after they are posted.
I never understood adults who got tired at 10 pm and said it's because they had to get up for work, but it's 10 pm and I'm tired because I have to get up for work.
Oh yeah - 4th of July - went to Laguna Beach with Eric and Evan and others - good time!
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Parents and Brother
Last week my parents headed out to San Clemente and Eric headed down for the weekend so for a few days the whole immediate family was together. The travel plans were actually much more complex than that but I'll skip over the details.
It was really good seeing Mom, Dad and Eric. I really appreciate my parent's help getting my place setup. Tomorrow (Thursday) I get the couch and coffee table and I think the apartment will start feeling more like a real place (standing during every meal at the apartment has gotten a bit tiresome - although Cameron's free dinners and oatmeal packets have made that a somewhat rare event).
Over the week:
Ate at several fish restaurants in Dana Harbor - good stuff and nice views and really good calamari (apparently apple spell isn't a seafood fan...).
Spent time at the apartment's hot tub and pool and made use of the grills - always good times.
Got down to San Clemente's beach - also always a good time. Also walked through an outdoor art festival on the way down to the beach - good except the reminder of how expensive art is. On the beach after seeing how far out into the ocean we could get while fighting the waves (which were pretty good size that day) (for me at least the limiting factor was the amount of ocean water I could tolerate invading my body - the human body might be mostly salt water but add a bit extra and it gets all unhappy) and body surfing them back we decided to try boogie boarding. I might give boogie boarding another try at some point, but I think body surfing is the way to go (well, still need to try surfing to see how that goes).
Also found some interesting restaurants in San Clemente and surrounding area. At one point during the week someone was helpful enough to tell me that there's a really good taco place in San Clemente (for those that haven't been to San Clemente it's about 70 miles from the border, I'll leave it to you to guess how many taco places there are).
Did some shopping.
Went golfing - it has been a long time but was fun to get out and try it again. I think that I'm at this interesting skill level where I can not play for a few years and still be about as good as I was the last time I played. I definitely need to add some exercises that resemble swing my back and arms around really fast to the workout routine (well, that or when I play golf not try to make up for a lack of skill by swinging really hard).
Went to dinner at my parents' friend's house. Very nice people and very nice stone deck looking out at the ocean in Laguna.
I'm probably leaving something out but at least got across the idea that it was a full and fun week.
It was really good seeing Mom, Dad and Eric. I really appreciate my parent's help getting my place setup. Tomorrow (Thursday) I get the couch and coffee table and I think the apartment will start feeling more like a real place (standing during every meal at the apartment has gotten a bit tiresome - although Cameron's free dinners and oatmeal packets have made that a somewhat rare event).
Over the week:
Ate at several fish restaurants in Dana Harbor - good stuff and nice views and really good calamari (apparently apple spell isn't a seafood fan...).
Spent time at the apartment's hot tub and pool and made use of the grills - always good times.
Got down to San Clemente's beach - also always a good time. Also walked through an outdoor art festival on the way down to the beach - good except the reminder of how expensive art is. On the beach after seeing how far out into the ocean we could get while fighting the waves (which were pretty good size that day) (for me at least the limiting factor was the amount of ocean water I could tolerate invading my body - the human body might be mostly salt water but add a bit extra and it gets all unhappy) and body surfing them back we decided to try boogie boarding. I might give boogie boarding another try at some point, but I think body surfing is the way to go (well, still need to try surfing to see how that goes).
Also found some interesting restaurants in San Clemente and surrounding area. At one point during the week someone was helpful enough to tell me that there's a really good taco place in San Clemente (for those that haven't been to San Clemente it's about 70 miles from the border, I'll leave it to you to guess how many taco places there are).
Did some shopping.
Went golfing - it has been a long time but was fun to get out and try it again. I think that I'm at this interesting skill level where I can not play for a few years and still be about as good as I was the last time I played. I definitely need to add some exercises that resemble swing my back and arms around really fast to the workout routine (well, that or when I play golf not try to make up for a lack of skill by swinging really hard).
Went to dinner at my parents' friend's house. Very nice people and very nice stone deck looking out at the ocean in Laguna.
I'm probably leaving something out but at least got across the idea that it was a full and fun week.
Ken Lay and Defibrillators
Most of you have probably heard that Ken Lay died of a "massive heart attack" (well maybe not the reader(s) in Israel who either finished their thesis 3 days ago or are 3 days late, but other than them...).
This slate article, which Eric pointed out to me, discusses what it means when a heart attack is reported. As the article explains it might be a heart attack or it might be cardiac arrest. If it was really a heart attack then I have nothing more to say about it. However, if it was cardiac arrest, an implantable defibrillator might have saved him. Hmmmm - Cheney has one, and it is possible that one would have saved Lay's life, I need to come up with some better examples if I'm going to feel good about my job...
This slate article, which Eric pointed out to me, discusses what it means when a heart attack is reported. As the article explains it might be a heart attack or it might be cardiac arrest. If it was really a heart attack then I have nothing more to say about it. However, if it was cardiac arrest, an implantable defibrillator might have saved him. Hmmmm - Cheney has one, and it is possible that one would have saved Lay's life, I need to come up with some better examples if I'm going to feel good about my job...
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