Everyone needs to go out right now and watch Hellcats (1967). I'm saying this because I don't want to be the only person to have had to endure it recently. As dedicated readers (all one of you) should know, I enjoy a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie every so often. Tonight's feature was the aformentioned Hellcats. It was awful. I'd try to describe it, but I think I'd do a better job than the script writers. It was that bad. The MST3K part was funny enough, but the movie was so bad, even they didn't have much to work with. It was terrible.
My paper for Tactical Missile Design is done. I've got a couple people reading over it for grammar and obvious technical issues, but those are minor changes compared to my 30 pages of brilliance (and 5 pages of the phrase "can't sleep, clowns will eat me"). I'm going to finalize as quickly as I can, print it, and have it turned in well before the deadline, so that it can be lost by the secretary, just like my take-home final for Rockets I was. Good times, good times.
My thesis program is now up from 900,000,000 calculations (and 3 minutes of run time) to close to 4 billion calculations and nearly 20 minutes of run time. And this is really just the first part of the analysis. At some point I'm going to have to iterate within the program to get thermal properties (although most of the calculations will be outside of that loop). This is already a long program, and it's only going to get longer from here.
At some point, I should probably study for my final on Thursday. Hmm. More tomorrow.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Starting a Trend
It seems my post last night led to everyone else updating as well. This, of course, means I have to update again to stay ahead of everyone. You know what, people? I can handle it. I've got La Grange playing on iTunes, my fingers are all flexed, and I'm leaned back in my chair - do your worst. Only in Blogger, though, because when it comes down to it, I'm all talk.
I'll start with the good news: Brent has passed his thesis defense. While I'm sure this is good news to him and to Ashley, to me it means I get my couch back. Not that it's much of a couch. It's never been what I'd call comfortable, and it's ripping at a corner, but it has sufficed for what I needed. Really, though, way to go Brent.
That's really all the news, there's not any bad. Or nothing I can think of right now.
I do have one quick editorial. A friend of mine joined a Facebook group named "Students for Concealed Carry on Campus," which as I understand it, is organized to allow those with a handgun carry permit to carry their weapon on school campuses. Currently such a permit allows the person to carry a firearm anywhere except (1) places where liquor is sold for consumption on the premises [no guns in bars, can have one in 7-11 since they sell, but do not intend for you to drink it there] (2) schools of all types [public, private, elementary, high school, colleges] and (3) any business which specifically prohibits it [usually a sign on the door or something similar]. Some exception exist, e.g., you are allowed to have a firearm on a school campus if you are just there to drop off / pick up someone and the weapon is secured and never handled. Anyway, all of the detail isn't important. The Facebook group seeks the elimination of the school yard exemption. One argument is that if someone had their permit and handgun with them at Virginia Tech, the casualities might have been significantly reduced. After all, the shooter was already breaking the law just by having his gun. I have to say, I support gun rights, but not this particular movement. Permits can only be issued to person over 21, so at lower schools, only teachers could have guns, but at colleges, it would be expanded to seniors, most juniors, and some sophomores who could legally have a gun. I've grown up around guns and know how to handle them safely, not that it's hard, but people just don't think when they aren't used to safety issues, but who's to say my roommate won't find it, or an RA, or a guest to my room. That's assuming no ill intent, just accidents. What happens when word gets around that someone has a gun in their room? A disturbed person now has access to a gun when maybe they couldn't get to one before. I haven't heard if we know how the Va Teach shooter got his guns, but why should we make it easier on him? College is a place to learn. You should definitely feel safe there, but I don't think allowing carry permits to extend to campuses accomplishes that, except for maybe a few individuals, maybe. This got longer than I originally intended, much like most of my opinions, but I think it's important. Students don't need handguns at school. The chance of causing a bad far outweighs the chance of stopping a bad, and, honestly, I don't trust most college students to handle the responsbility. I know too many college students. Yes, it still requires a permit, but it's a whole lot different overreacting to a situation with a gun handy, and without one handy. First case, someone ends up with a bloody nose, and it's probably a party to the argument. Second case, at least one person goes to the hospital AT BEST, and it may or may not be the target. There are additional safety precautions that can be taken - panic buttons in classrooms (my high school installed them over one summer - they were labelled "fire" but they work the same) for instance, and there's discussion of how to handle mental distress. What you don't need to do is add a loaded gun to an atmosphere full of hormones, hot heads, and conflict.
I'm tired now. More tomorrow.
I'll start with the good news: Brent has passed his thesis defense. While I'm sure this is good news to him and to Ashley, to me it means I get my couch back. Not that it's much of a couch. It's never been what I'd call comfortable, and it's ripping at a corner, but it has sufficed for what I needed. Really, though, way to go Brent.
That's really all the news, there's not any bad. Or nothing I can think of right now.
I do have one quick editorial. A friend of mine joined a Facebook group named "Students for Concealed Carry on Campus," which as I understand it, is organized to allow those with a handgun carry permit to carry their weapon on school campuses. Currently such a permit allows the person to carry a firearm anywhere except (1) places where liquor is sold for consumption on the premises [no guns in bars, can have one in 7-11 since they sell, but do not intend for you to drink it there] (2) schools of all types [public, private, elementary, high school, colleges] and (3) any business which specifically prohibits it [usually a sign on the door or something similar]. Some exception exist, e.g., you are allowed to have a firearm on a school campus if you are just there to drop off / pick up someone and the weapon is secured and never handled. Anyway, all of the detail isn't important. The Facebook group seeks the elimination of the school yard exemption. One argument is that if someone had their permit and handgun with them at Virginia Tech, the casualities might have been significantly reduced. After all, the shooter was already breaking the law just by having his gun. I have to say, I support gun rights, but not this particular movement. Permits can only be issued to person over 21, so at lower schools, only teachers could have guns, but at colleges, it would be expanded to seniors, most juniors, and some sophomores who could legally have a gun. I've grown up around guns and know how to handle them safely, not that it's hard, but people just don't think when they aren't used to safety issues, but who's to say my roommate won't find it, or an RA, or a guest to my room. That's assuming no ill intent, just accidents. What happens when word gets around that someone has a gun in their room? A disturbed person now has access to a gun when maybe they couldn't get to one before. I haven't heard if we know how the Va Teach shooter got his guns, but why should we make it easier on him? College is a place to learn. You should definitely feel safe there, but I don't think allowing carry permits to extend to campuses accomplishes that, except for maybe a few individuals, maybe. This got longer than I originally intended, much like most of my opinions, but I think it's important. Students don't need handguns at school. The chance of causing a bad far outweighs the chance of stopping a bad, and, honestly, I don't trust most college students to handle the responsbility. I know too many college students. Yes, it still requires a permit, but it's a whole lot different overreacting to a situation with a gun handy, and without one handy. First case, someone ends up with a bloody nose, and it's probably a party to the argument. Second case, at least one person goes to the hospital AT BEST, and it may or may not be the target. There are additional safety precautions that can be taken - panic buttons in classrooms (my high school installed them over one summer - they were labelled "fire" but they work the same) for instance, and there's discussion of how to handle mental distress. What you don't need to do is add a loaded gun to an atmosphere full of hormones, hot heads, and conflict.
I'm tired now. More tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
900,000,000 Calculations
That's what it takes to filter my data for my thesis project. It's a nested "for" loop of 30,000 iterations for each loop, or 30k x 30k = 900M. That doesn't even count the differentiation, which requires at least 30,000 more operations. Granted that 30,000 is added, not multiplied, so it's not too bad after the filtering is done. I timed the filtering a couple times, and it takes my dual-core processor 3 minutes to run those 900,000,000 operations. Not terrible, not great, but it'll do.
I'll try to do better with the updates. More tomorrow.
I'll try to do better with the updates. More tomorrow.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Perhaps Puff
The return of the Friday night star stuff seems to be just what was required to get a blog entry out of me. I have had the time, but not the desire, to write more. It's nothing specific - no lingering grudges or anything - just haven't felt like logging into Blogger and writing. Tonight, however, Lee said he was going to blog, so I had to as well.
I'm not even going to try to summarize the last couple of weeks. For one thing, it hasn't been all that interesting. (I did see TMNT, which is a very good interpretation of the Ninja Turtles franchise.) Another reason I'm skipping the recap is that I'm lazy.
I am finally working on some thesis-related work. I am taking data recorded from thermocouples and using that to estimate temperatures inside a rocket engine. The data they have has a lot of noise (signals which have no physical relevance but exist due to the way the measurements are taken and recorded), so the first step is to apply a filter to remove the noise. For the past couple of days, I've been working with what's called a notch filter, or a band-stop filter. The goal of that filter is to remove the noise created by the electrical power system (which is at 60 Hertz). The next step is to remove other noise by using a low-pass filter, which essentially smooths the data. I've never used filtering before, so I've been relying on Dr. Smith of UTSI and Brent, who crashed on my couch most of the week. Dr. Smith told me what to do and gave me an example of how to do it; Brent helped me understand some of the details of how it works. Dr. Moeller advised, by which I mean he asked me what I was doing, asked Dr. Smith what to do, and let me show him the results of what I've been doing. All this filtering is just to make the data useful for the equations we have, so this is supposed to be the easy part.
I'm heading down to Huntsville tomorrow to try to watch some of the Great Moonbuggy Race. The weather is supposed to be bad, so the race stands a chance of being cancelled, but Lee and I are going to try to see an old CBU friend and maybe a professor or two. I'd also love to run into some people who'd like to give me a job.
I'm going to try to stay current on this blog, but the next couple of weeks are going to be crunch time. I need to finish my Missiles project (presentation and paper deadlines are coming up way too quick), plus with thesis work to be doing, I'll be busy enough for a while. When classes end this semester, I'll be focusing on thesis work exclusively, so I'll be pretty much setting my own schedule. I'm going to try to get to Memphis a little more than I have been lately. Hopefully, I can get my thesis done with lighter, steady work rather than trying to get a lot done in short intervals, and find time to enjoy my last few months in school. Yeah, that's going to happen. More tomorrow.
I'm not even going to try to summarize the last couple of weeks. For one thing, it hasn't been all that interesting. (I did see TMNT, which is a very good interpretation of the Ninja Turtles franchise.) Another reason I'm skipping the recap is that I'm lazy.
I am finally working on some thesis-related work. I am taking data recorded from thermocouples and using that to estimate temperatures inside a rocket engine. The data they have has a lot of noise (signals which have no physical relevance but exist due to the way the measurements are taken and recorded), so the first step is to apply a filter to remove the noise. For the past couple of days, I've been working with what's called a notch filter, or a band-stop filter. The goal of that filter is to remove the noise created by the electrical power system (which is at 60 Hertz). The next step is to remove other noise by using a low-pass filter, which essentially smooths the data. I've never used filtering before, so I've been relying on Dr. Smith of UTSI and Brent, who crashed on my couch most of the week. Dr. Smith told me what to do and gave me an example of how to do it; Brent helped me understand some of the details of how it works. Dr. Moeller advised, by which I mean he asked me what I was doing, asked Dr. Smith what to do, and let me show him the results of what I've been doing. All this filtering is just to make the data useful for the equations we have, so this is supposed to be the easy part.
I'm heading down to Huntsville tomorrow to try to watch some of the Great Moonbuggy Race. The weather is supposed to be bad, so the race stands a chance of being cancelled, but Lee and I are going to try to see an old CBU friend and maybe a professor or two. I'd also love to run into some people who'd like to give me a job.
I'm going to try to stay current on this blog, but the next couple of weeks are going to be crunch time. I need to finish my Missiles project (presentation and paper deadlines are coming up way too quick), plus with thesis work to be doing, I'll be busy enough for a while. When classes end this semester, I'll be focusing on thesis work exclusively, so I'll be pretty much setting my own schedule. I'm going to try to get to Memphis a little more than I have been lately. Hopefully, I can get my thesis done with lighter, steady work rather than trying to get a lot done in short intervals, and find time to enjoy my last few months in school. Yeah, that's going to happen. More tomorrow.
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