| Writing! |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|01:29 am] |
...in bed! (a la the appropriate modifier to be added to fortune cookies). Lots of other applications like CiteULike, Delicious, Evernote, Wordpress, and LJ, have these things called tags. And For some reason I try and fail to use them on all the other applications while avoiding it altogether on LJ. By failing at tags I mean that I'm not sufficiently consistent with its use for it to live up to the supposed utility of tagging. I will probably keep on not using them here but try to be better with it at other places. The landscape keyboard is much easier to use, but the main drawback of extending the landscape mode to all applications is that when I'm lying down I like to have my reading material to the side of my head and turn to face it. But if the text rotates to be correct with respect to gravity, then that obviously doesn't work (failure to describe 3d geometry in English. I think you get the gist of it). Hopefully there will be a solution soon. Also, the P&K deli across Beacon is quite good. Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
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| Location detect |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|05:37 pm] |
Has been made slightly less sensitive esp since it proves to be somewhat inaccurate. Also I am getting a bit better at typing on this thing maybe. In other news, it has been rainy and cold out here for three days. Kind of sucks because it's times like these which can encourage flu transmission. Unrelatedly, you should see the video of the PC guy on Apple commercials being funny at the Radio correspondents dinner or summat. Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
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| Liz Becton |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|01:48 pm] |
is some scheduling staffer working on Capitol Hill who has, in recent days, been Internet-mobbed for being nasty and humorless. Read all about this hilarious saga of Internet justice,
http://wonkette.com/tag/liz-becton |
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| IQC + food. |
[Jun. 15th, 2009|11:03 pm] |
Okay. It's been a long time since the last post so we've got a lot of ground to cover. For the last two weeks I was at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, being in a short summer school course on experimental quantum information processing http://www.iqc.ca/conferences/useqip/. The trip there, taken by itself, was pretty unimpressive: the suburban area that lies between Waterloo and Toronto looks suspiciously like Fairfax County, Virginia, and the flight was pretty short anyway. The first thing you notice about the campus of UW is the geese which inhabit the green space. Their droppings were everywhere which presented a challenge for anyone trying to walk down the street with a rolling travelers bag.
In total there there were 11 students; five were from outside North America. Everyone was a third or fourth year studying physics. The course consisted of talks presented by the various researchers on the IQC faculty on their own expert subfields, e.g., Raymond Laflamme (director of IQC; drives this super-awesome red van that's probably about twice as old as his students, which we called, though probably not for the first time, the Mystery Mobile) spoke for a few hours on QEC, David Cory gave some talks on NMR implementations, as well as stuff like some neutron interferometry experiment he's done, Michele Mosca told us about some quantum algorithms, etc., etc. In addition, Tony Leggett (famous for his work on superfluidity, for which he got a Nobel, among other areas) was visiting IQC at the time, so he gave a lecture on his grand program for experimentally testing the limits of quantum mechanics with a view toward hopefully getting to test and land upon some grand, macro-realist theory (and we sat in on one among his series of lectures to IQC researchers about various topics related to topological quantum computing; that one went way over my head).
( cooking ) |
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| Goodfellas the movie |
[Mar. 2nd, 2009|01:46 am] |
My favorite scene out of the movie "Goodfellas" is the part where the protagonist, an Italian (+ part Irish) gangster, who at that point in the movie just started seeing this Jewish girl (who later becomes his wife), goes with her to some sort of a beach resort place which she frequents. The waiter brings some drinks and our hero is about to take out his wad of cash to pay for it, only to be stopped by the girlfriend who informs him that "You have to sign for it here."
The brief scene (really it was only like 15 seconds long) turned out to be the film's most striking display of the differences between their respective origins/cultures. Its effectiveness still fills me with awe. |
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| Pen |
[Feb. 16th, 2009|09:54 pm] |
Many readers are familiar with my weakness for things like nice pens, papers, and such. The other day I just went into a Bob Slate (http://bobslate.com/) stationery shop, and found some ink cartridges, under the heading "generic European". Specifically, it was this: http://www.pelikan.com/pulse/Pulsar/en_US.Store.displayStore.36432./6)
Okay, jump back: 2005, Spain at IPhO, on the second, experimental exam, they gave everyone two nice, small pens---a ball point and a fountain pen. The latter was actually quite excellent, so I actually used it instead of my own pens I had brought. By the end, the quality of the pen was even more apparent, because the ease with which I could write with it had significantly reduced the stress on my hand than what I had gotten used to from 5-hour long tests. Anyway, by a great coincidence the ink cartridge emptied just as the exam had finished. Few days later back home I went about looking to buy a new cartridge for a replacement, but found none that fit properly, and I haven't been able to use the pen since.
So when I saw the "generic European" ink, of course I bought it, and just earlier today I successfully replaced the cartridge, and now it writes again! So life is awesome since I get to use the pen now---and at $2 for a pack of 6, this is could end up being my most cost-effective option for writing, depending on how long the ink lasts. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 10th, 2009|02:02 am] |
Finished the GR exam today.
Why does Google keep changing its favicon? |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 9th, 2009|01:02 am] |
In Korea there was an "emergency arrest" of a blogger for posting a claim that the government was telling big banks and corporations to stop buying dollars (i.e, stop selling the Korean Won).
Let's just say I've never been happier that circumstances have rescued me out of that place.
Also, the Federal Reserve has secretly been selling the gold in Frot Knox in order to depress the market price of gold. ::waits for the FBI to show up at my door:: |
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| I like LyX |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|02:50 am] |
I like LyX, you like LyX, everybody likes LyX~~
To all TeX users and non-users, I highly recommend that you take a look at LyX, a quasi-visual TeX editor. It can save some serious time, esp. if you're the kind to stare at your document and make lots of little changes, like me. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 19th, 2008|12:50 pm] |
Saw /W./ on its opening night Friday. The theatre was totally packed, which I didn't expect. It was very fun, but as far as greatness goes, it falls far short of, say, /Nixon/, another movie by Stone.
Today at church there was this lady visiting, who worked with the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. After most of the service, during the announcements, she stood up on the pulpit and told us that Proposition 1, a question on the ballot in Massachussetts this November, is immoral. Sigh. |
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| Random |
[Oct. 14th, 2008|02:36 pm] |
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Been reading the news about how ACORN has been submitting thousands of fake registrations across the country? That's not all. I remember one summer at Ross there were a bunch of ACORNs that were staying in the same building as us for a while. They weren't just rabid insane; When I returned after going off somewhere for about a week, I was told that some ACORN people gang-raped a child in an elevator in one of the other dorms or something like that. Sigh. |
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mlee1's journal