The end of the semester is in sight. Unfortunately the Thanksgiving holiday is right in the middle of some major lab assignments so I have to see that I get those mostly completed this week even though they aren't due till after holiday.
A brief overview of this semester's studies:
The circuits class has consisted of op-amps, diodes, and MOSFETs. Still to come is a section on BJTs. The lecture is great but the lab has been a huge amount of work. We still have 2 more lab assignments to do and they are very involved.
This semester's signals class was not so enlightening as last semester's but still good. Topics included sampling, modulation and transmission (mostly AM), feedback systems and root locus analysis. The LabView assignments aren't particularly exciting for me but hopefully I'm learning something.
My affection for VHDL seems to oscillate between positive and negative. I have been excited about it and hated it but right now I'm feeling pretty good about it. I like working with VHDL more than with software programming languages.
Random Signal Analysis, hasn't had much to do with signals at all yet. It's an introduction to discrete and continuous random variables regarding probablility, expectation and variance.
As I go into my last 3 semesters I plan on taking 3 more circuits courses, digital signal processing along with another signals course on filter design or some such, and properties of electronic materials. Oh yeah, next semester I have to take economics too, maybe it will be enlightening.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
jellybeans
I've been stumped on this problem all weekend:
A candy factory has an endless supply of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet jelly beans. The factory packages the jelly beans into jars of 100 jelly beans each. One possible color distribution, for example, is a jar of 58 red, 22 yellow, and 20 green jelly beans. As a marketing gimmick, the factory guarantees that no two jars have the same color distribution. What is the maximum number of jars the factory can produce? (Hint: Think of lining up the jelly beans, by first placing the red ones, then the orange ones, etc. You also place 5 dividers to indicate where one color ends and another starts. Note that two dividers can be adjacent if there are no jelly beans of some color.)
What do you think?
A candy factory has an endless supply of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet jelly beans. The factory packages the jelly beans into jars of 100 jelly beans each. One possible color distribution, for example, is a jar of 58 red, 22 yellow, and 20 green jelly beans. As a marketing gimmick, the factory guarantees that no two jars have the same color distribution. What is the maximum number of jars the factory can produce? (Hint: Think of lining up the jelly beans, by first placing the red ones, then the orange ones, etc. You also place 5 dividers to indicate where one color ends and another starts. Note that two dividers can be adjacent if there are no jelly beans of some color.)
What do you think?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The Story of a Trombone (the wonders of steel wool)
Twelve years ago my sister-in-law Brenda, knowing that I was very interested in musical instruments of all sorts, gave me a trombone that she had played in high school. This trombone was in a fire and had suffered major cosmetic damage in addition to the case being destroyed and the mouthpiece lost; the thing was ugly.
In an attempt to make it more presentable, I put it in the bathtub and tried to scrub the scum off; soap and water did nothing. After giving up on making it look better, I turned my focus to how it sounds. I got a mouthpiece for it and I even lucked out by getting a free case. The case, while a little bit used and shabby, looked like a dream compared to what it protected. After just a little bit of maintenance the instrument worked just fine and I proceeded to learn how to play it for a few months as a curiosity.
After a little while, it got tucked away in a corner and there it waited for many years until this year because Shule has decided to join the middle school band. Over the summer, Shule and his band director decided that he would start on the trombone. Marisa overruled my idea to send him off to school with something that looked like it was just pulled out of a landfill. She's totally right too, I fell in line quickly because in those awkward times of middle school, it may be best to not create extra opportunities for ridicule.
There was talk of renting or buying an instrument but I was developing an idea to avoid that if possible. When I came home with steel wool and a smile on my face Marisa gave me a look as if to say: "I'll humor you for a little while, but if this doesn't work we're going back to the original plan".
The finish on that trombone was cooked and in many places it was charred not just on the surface but deep into it. I worked on it for 3 days and my hands ended up sore and discolored but it worked. While I was at it I smoothed out some of the dings.
This shot was taken halfway through the process for comparison. Notice how good the bell looks next to the unfinished slide.
I can't say it looks new, but it looks like an instrument that's been used and cared for. This definitely beats buying or renting one, most rentals probably don't look this good.
Since I've invested some toil, I've developed a 
new attachment to it and Shule is even happy to announce: "my trombone has survived a fire!".
In an attempt to make it more presentable, I put it in the bathtub and tried to scrub the scum off; soap and water did nothing. After giving up on making it look better, I turned my focus to how it sounds. I got a mouthpiece for it and I even lucked out by getting a free case. The case, while a little bit used and shabby, looked like a dream compared to what it protected. After just a little bit of maintenance the instrument worked just fine and I proceeded to learn how to play it for a few months as a curiosity.
After a little while, it got tucked away in a corner and there it waited for many years until this year because Shule has decided to join the middle school band. Over the summer, Shule and his band director decided that he would start on the trombone. Marisa overruled my idea to send him off to school with something that looked like it was just pulled out of a landfill. She's totally right too, I fell in line quickly because in those awkward times of middle school, it may be best to not create extra opportunities for ridicule.
There was talk of renting or buying an instrument but I was developing an idea to avoid that if possible. When I came home with steel wool and a smile on my face Marisa gave me a look as if to say: "I'll humor you for a little while, but if this doesn't work we're going back to the original plan".
The finish on that trombone was cooked and in many places it was charred not just on the surface but deep into it. I worked on it for 3 days and my hands ended up sore and discolored but it worked. While I was at it I smoothed out some of the dings.
This shot was taken halfway through the process for comparison. Notice how good the bell looks next to the unfinished slide.I can't say it looks new, but it looks like an instrument that's been used and cared for. This definitely beats buying or renting one, most rentals probably don't look this good.
new attachment to it and Shule is even happy to announce: "my trombone has survived a fire!".
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Renaissance Festival
Shazer won some tickets to the renaissance festival a few months ago. We finally used them Saturday March 28th. I took Shule and Shazer, it was the first time for all of us. We walked around a lot and saw a lot of shows, including: pipers and drums, humorous clowns, jugglers, a whip cracker, a large fowl show (falcons, owls and vultures), and jousting. Along with the numerous shows there was ample opportunity to spend a lot of money on all manner of crafts, clothing and food. We just window shopped as we walked around the park in between shows. A few things that stand out from wandering around the market were the ladies spinning wool into yarn, weaving fancy tapestries and the blacksmith with a very impressive bellows stoking a very hot fire. The boys had a good time, Shazer especially is interested in the sword fighting element so he was excited to see the dramatic jousting presentations (see video below). Shule liked the jokes that the jugglers told. He got tired but I convinced him we should stay longer and we would get to see some interesting things that we wouldn't see anywhere else. He stuck it out. Please view the full web photo album.
Monday, March 30, 2009
light is a bandit
I've started learning about special relativity in school. I've heard a little about relativity in the past and had previously developed a sort of blind trust that space and time are relative to frame of reference, or something like that. I knew that if you go really fast then time doesn't pass at the same rate, I had no clue how. Recently when working with optics I read that light travels away from the source at a constant speed and even if you were moving away from the source, as far as you are concerned, the light still approaches you at the same speed. This concept totally blew my mind because as you all know: when someone throws a ball at you and you run away, it then appears to you that the ball is coming at you slower than if you just stood still. If the ball behaved as light does then as soon as you start running it would speed up to its initial speed plus your speed. So how is light an exception to the laws of mechanics? Maybe it has something to do with light being a wave of energy stored in electric and magnetic fields, also light has no mass like a ball does. It turns out that this curious behavior of light is Einstein's second postulate of special relativity and because of it, crazy things happen. Things I don't yet understand so I won't try to explain.
I do however want to share what I think is an interesting example of current in a wire from 2 different inertial frames of reference. We have observer 1 who is stationary with respect to the current and observer 2 who is moving with the same direction and velocity as the current.
Observer 1 experiences a magnetic field (it can be calculated by Biot-Savart, or Ampere's Law).
If we imagine the current as individual positively charged particles then to observer 2 the so-called current becomes an electrostatic line of charge.
Observer 2 would experience an electric field due to these charges (we find this by Coulomb's or Gauss' Law).
This might lead to a nasty disagreement between the two observers as observer 1 would insist that there was a magnetic field and observer 2 would be quite certain that it was actually an electric field and they both would be right. I must give credit to Gary Adams who showed that to me (and 170 other people in the room) last semester and is a really great physics professor.
I do however want to share what I think is an interesting example of current in a wire from 2 different inertial frames of reference. We have observer 1 who is stationary with respect to the current and observer 2 who is moving with the same direction and velocity as the current.
Observer 1 experiences a magnetic field (it can be calculated by Biot-Savart, or Ampere's Law).
If we imagine the current as individual positively charged particles then to observer 2 the so-called current becomes an electrostatic line of charge.
Observer 2 would experience an electric field due to these charges (we find this by Coulomb's or Gauss' Law).
This might lead to a nasty disagreement between the two observers as observer 1 would insist that there was a magnetic field and observer 2 would be quite certain that it was actually an electric field and they both would be right. I must give credit to Gary Adams who showed that to me (and 170 other people in the room) last semester and is a really great physics professor.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Radio in my Head
Introductory note: If you are not a very big Radiohead fan I don't expect you to explore all the links in this post but please if you do anything, go here! (I'll remind you again at the end.)
I'm interested in how bands form, I like to read about how groups got started. It's an interesting thing that when I want to find out about a band, the first place I go is Wikipedia. I find that you get a good summary of historical information on groups whereas if you go to the artists official website you usually just get the latest news and things that don't interest me as much. I'm interested in the humble beginnings, the ugly past, the trials and failures gone through before the big break. Wikipedia will usually give you a good start but if you want to know more you have to search for in-depth interviews or maybe someone's put out a book on the band. I've been getting more into Radiohead lately and they have the most confusing official webpage of any band I've seen. None of it really makes sense to me and I can appreciate that maybe the band just wants to express themselves a certain way, they are entitled to it, I just don't get anything from visiting. Since their site left me unfulfilled I searched for content elsewhere and found it.
On youtube there are some videos of the band doing a sort of house concert videocast performance. Actually it looks like they did one on Nov 9 2007 and another Dec 31 2007. The former was entitled "Thumbs Down" and the latter "Scotch Mist". In fact, "Scotch Mist" is a 52 minute video available on youtube including performances of all the songs from their new album. These are live performances but the band is just set up in a house somewhere and the audience is on the other side of the podcast. I totally love it. The Thumbs Down session included them doing covers including The Smiths "Headmaster Ritual" and Joy Division "Ceremony" among others. So maybe you don't want to devote a few hours watching these videos, I understand that. You can also view individual tracks, Radiohead actually has a good youtube profile with some of the songs listed separately. (I just want to squeeze in another link the song there there, a really good video from a live concert).
Portishead also did a similar videocast just before the release of their newest album. The video is called "Portishead in Portishead" I believe. It was available till the release of the album but I've found that if you go to their official site you can register your email with them and they will allow you access to the video. This one was also captivating to me, I loved watching their New York live video, some musicians are just fascinating to watch. They do such interesting things with vintage keyboards and old tape echo effects.
I've been walking around with "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" in my head. It's on Radiohead's latest "In Rainbows" album. I learned the guitar part and fooled around with working the song up myself but I have the problem that my voice is not high enough. Makes me a little frustrated but I've encountered this frequently so I have a procedure: I consider falsetto, I consider transposing, I consider whether it just wasn't meant to be, I try harder to extend my range. The first 3 options have been successful enough to keep me content in the past but the last one still hasn't ever come through for me as well as I want it to. If I end up working it out I'll post a video and you can witness for yourself me trying to fake my way through it.
So in writing this post I have come across yet another set of wonderful performance videos for VH1 Live From The Basement. Much like the other videos mentioned but a little smoother around the edges and with a few different songs. I highly reccomend Where I End and You Begin, this is the link I mentioned at the top and you can see Jonny Greenwood playing the unique instrument the Ondes Martenot, you can play it similarly to a theremin. I've overloaded this post with links and I realize I've gotten out of hand so I'd better end it now. I hope there is music out there that gets you as excited as this gets me.
I'm interested in how bands form, I like to read about how groups got started. It's an interesting thing that when I want to find out about a band, the first place I go is Wikipedia. I find that you get a good summary of historical information on groups whereas if you go to the artists official website you usually just get the latest news and things that don't interest me as much. I'm interested in the humble beginnings, the ugly past, the trials and failures gone through before the big break. Wikipedia will usually give you a good start but if you want to know more you have to search for in-depth interviews or maybe someone's put out a book on the band. I've been getting more into Radiohead lately and they have the most confusing official webpage of any band I've seen. None of it really makes sense to me and I can appreciate that maybe the band just wants to express themselves a certain way, they are entitled to it, I just don't get anything from visiting. Since their site left me unfulfilled I searched for content elsewhere and found it.
On youtube there are some videos of the band doing a sort of house concert videocast performance. Actually it looks like they did one on Nov 9 2007 and another Dec 31 2007. The former was entitled "Thumbs Down" and the latter "Scotch Mist". In fact, "Scotch Mist" is a 52 minute video available on youtube including performances of all the songs from their new album. These are live performances but the band is just set up in a house somewhere and the audience is on the other side of the podcast. I totally love it. The Thumbs Down session included them doing covers including The Smiths "Headmaster Ritual" and Joy Division "Ceremony" among others. So maybe you don't want to devote a few hours watching these videos, I understand that. You can also view individual tracks, Radiohead actually has a good youtube profile with some of the songs listed separately. (I just want to squeeze in another link the song there there, a really good video from a live concert).
Portishead also did a similar videocast just before the release of their newest album. The video is called "Portishead in Portishead" I believe. It was available till the release of the album but I've found that if you go to their official site you can register your email with them and they will allow you access to the video. This one was also captivating to me, I loved watching their New York live video, some musicians are just fascinating to watch. They do such interesting things with vintage keyboards and old tape echo effects.
I've been walking around with "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" in my head. It's on Radiohead's latest "In Rainbows" album. I learned the guitar part and fooled around with working the song up myself but I have the problem that my voice is not high enough. Makes me a little frustrated but I've encountered this frequently so I have a procedure: I consider falsetto, I consider transposing, I consider whether it just wasn't meant to be, I try harder to extend my range. The first 3 options have been successful enough to keep me content in the past but the last one still hasn't ever come through for me as well as I want it to. If I end up working it out I'll post a video and you can witness for yourself me trying to fake my way through it.
So in writing this post I have come across yet another set of wonderful performance videos for VH1 Live From The Basement. Much like the other videos mentioned but a little smoother around the edges and with a few different songs. I highly reccomend Where I End and You Begin, this is the link I mentioned at the top and you can see Jonny Greenwood playing the unique instrument the Ondes Martenot, you can play it similarly to a theremin. I've overloaded this post with links and I realize I've gotten out of hand so I'd better end it now. I hope there is music out there that gets you as excited as this gets me.
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