Geeks Anonymous: Downward [-ly awesome] Spiral

Every time I saw one I told myself "No!" [You don't mean that, just give it a try]. I resisted [resistance is futile]. I told myself time and again I did not need it, that it would be bad for me [there is no need only want, it would be bad in such a very good way].

I broke. I caved. I got one.

I am, of course, talking about the Awesome Acer Aspire One (AAO), with solid state drive (8GB) and Linux Lite OS. External storage is so cheap now that I need just a few GB on the machine itself and I take what is needed as it is needed. The OS was fine until I got to Clare and realised I had forgotten my password. Clearly, installing Ubuntu 8.10 and starting from scratch the simplest thing to do [Adopts a demeanor that broaches no argument, also known as Fingers-in-Ears-Chorussing-La-La-La-Not-Listening].

Spent hours getting it to 90% functionality. Luckily Ubuntu's support website is amazing. All I had to do was follow instructions, they have a AAO section, even if I followed poorly. I spent most of the time using terminal and I found out some nifty things. Currently, my favourite is chmod. It can change privileges on hard drives, so I can write to restricted drives.

Coming down from my hit of "Golden Silicon" [texture like #FFFC17], I purchased the Seagate Barracude 7200.11 1.5TB and a 320GB Samsung internal hard drives for my PC. The latter, will boot my OS. This lay-out, means carte blanche installs & reinstalls without touching my data. I want to switch to Ubuntu server OS and use my AAO as an access point. I got an enclosure for the 320GB hard drive (cheap as 15euro of chips), this way I can bring it into college and boot it externally for its quickening [more in the Higlander sense of the word, than the biological sense] until it can see my 3G modem.

Not known for planning or organisation skills, I looked at product reviews after purchase. I found this one and was instantly on a heady-high/decadent-nadir. Good, rigourous experimental technique. Clear charts. Tests in triplicate. When I finished with that, I had to have more. I quickly ODed on this because of this. I do believe I have found my one stop shop for hardware reviews... I can handle it!

Numbers of my year

• Finally figured out how to make sense of days of the week and dates of the month
• Sleeping: 106 days
• Saw 70 movies in the cinema [for the price of 36 films, thank you, Cineworld Unlimited Card]
• Watched 650 episodes of tv shows (averaging 2 a night, with the exceptions of holidays)
• Drank 500 l of water, 100 l juice, 600 slices of bread
• Training: 45-50 days [The mode is ~1 day a week or so, but my diligence suffered while I was in China, Estonia and Australia]
• Read 22 books [serious drop from previous years; I blame the parents and tv for rotting my brain]
• 3 weeks typing
• Walked more than 350 hours [1050 miles, Dublin, Ireland to Pisa, Italy
• My heart has beaten ~27,288,000 times [My resting heart rate is some 45 bpm or so, 35 if I really concentrate. While training it probably averages 100 bpm, between the heavy cardio stuff and the more sedate breathing exercises]
• Were I a car I would have travelled 9,336 km [Based on oxygen intake...]:

1. ~6,221,000 breaths in a year {12 (breaths/min) x 60 (min/hour) x 24 (hour/day) x 360 (day/y)}
2. 12,442,000 l-air/y {5,200,000 (breath/y) x 2 (l/breath)}
3. Inhale 508,000 mole-air/y {12,442,000 (l-air/y) / 24.5 (l/mol)}... Ideal Gas Law*
4. Consumed 35,560 mole-oxygen/y {508,000 x (0.21 - o.14**) } [Assuming I am a fit person]
5. This burns 2845 mole-petrol/y {O₂ + C₈H₁₈+8CO₂ + 9H₂O... 12.5 x Oxygen:Petrol}
6. I would have driven 9,336 km {2845 (mole-petrol) / 114 (g-petrol/mole) = 324.3 g-petrol, 324.3 (g-petrol) / 0.74 (kg-petrol/l) = 438.3 l-petrol, 438.3 (l-petrol) x 21.3 (km/l, equivalent to 50 mpg) = 9,336 km}

I was going to do one for how much heat I radiated, but the numbers were provided better than I could have done them here, but their lung capacity calculations are not as good, I think, not that anything I did up here was original work.
Speaking of which, the above method just back-of-the-envelope stuff [the wiki on this fills me with shame for using it, considering the big wigs that first used it. And I want this pamphlet "Modern Physics from an Elementary Point of View"!]. In my travels on the interweb I came across this site, which goes through the process from cell respiration POV. The "distance" travelled is very sensitive to the mpg chosen, but nearly a quarter of the way around the earth is not bad. :)

*Obviously I assumed the fugacity of the gases in question are ~ 1, which is reasonable at 1 atm and the moderate temperatures involved i.e. an ideal situation:


**The url I got the oxygen composition from seems to be on a dry basis... which makes things simple. For every volume of oxygen consumed, 1 volume carbon dioxide and and 1 volume of water is produced. On a dry basis there is not change in volumes. On a wet basis things change, for x oxygen converted:
***More rigourous ways to get the data would be the either monitor oxygen consumption (tricky) or calorie intake (simple but exhaustive) and monitor change in body weight, taking into consideration percentage body fat change. We get a partial material/energy balance [a complete one would involve... guh... noting all ins and... outs]. From that we back out an equivalent intake of oxygen, and other such things.

Christmas thoughts

Fun with Siblings
Got home. Baby sister was in the car when we were collected from town. I asked her,"Who am I?" and she answered,"I'm Molly!" How adorable, the princess thinks that the first person pronoun is reserved for her. In vengeance, I reminded her at every opportunity that Deirdre was my mother first ["My Mammy"], at times clutching her leg when Molly could see. It got to her more than the it did to Carthach when he was that age :) [it is the simple pleasures in life]... she got wise and started talking about "My Daddy" - checkmate.

It shows I am special, just like everyone else [on the list]
I'm torn over how guilty I should feel at annoyance by en-masse-Christmas-well-wishing. With cards, my name would have been written, maybe a personalised message. [scrunches face as visual indication of internal conflict].
They did go to the effort of setting it up and sending it to a list of people they thought deserved it [depending on the fraction of total contacts on the list]. Can they be blamed for the favouring the popular medium of communication? As I said,"torn."

Not just for Christmas
My brother got a puppy. He is rather shocked at how much work and how needy it is... ads regarding continued existence of young canines post-yule need to be rerun.

Christmas cooking with Mairtin

I cooked dinner tonight for some friends of mine. Attemped the noodle soup again.

The menu was

1. M&S apple and pork sausages and red onion grilled in hoisin sauce
2. Roast potatoes
3. Prawn crackers
   
4. Potato stuffing
   
5. Duck noodle soup
   
6. Roast duck
7. M&S double chocolate cookies, Carte D'Or vanilla ice-cream and mince pies

1. The sausages were easy. I boiled them, added some sliced red onions and lathered them in hoisin sauce. Placed them under the grill for a few minutes to brown.
2. On TV last Friday, Jamie Oliver was preparing a Christmas dinner and He used the run-off from the foul to roast the potatoes. I oiled the oil from the duck skin. I left this cool and separate over night. I decanted the oily top layer and kept it to one side. I skinned and boiled the potatoes. Poured some of the oil over it and through them into the grill to give them a colour.
   
3. Got Prawn crackers from the asian market, shallowed fried them in a frying pan, until they became big and white but not until the became brown (3-8s)
4. Boiled the potatoes separately. Mashed them up. Added sliced spring & red onions, carrot, baby corn and braeburn apples. Left some butter on top of the mixture and put in the oven to roast.
   
5. The soup was easy but time consuming. Again the night before I made my stock. this time I used duck (10.00Euro from Tesco!). I boiled the water, added some veg (spring onions, red onions, baby corn, red chilli peppers, bak choi, carrot plus garlic and ginger for some substance), skinned and boned the duck. Threw the bones in with the vegtables, left it boil for an hour or so. Turned of the heat, let it cure. Before dinner, I fished out the bones. Boiled the stock, 30 minutes before serving I added fresh vegtables (as previously listed). Prepared the noodles in separate pot and combined them when it was time to eat.
6. I wondered most of the day what to do with the duck meat. I decided to slice it up into bite size chunks with pinenuts, garlic, diced apple and red onion. Wrapped it all in foil and threw it into the oven until it was edible looking.
   
7. The desserts were graciously supplied by two of my dinner guests, Gleb and Barbara

The food was very tasty. The first time I took the roast duck out, it was still a bit too pink, the juice still a bit red, so I popped it back in to the oven. My favourite dish was the roast duck, because resulting gravey was so delicious I had to drink down the dregs of it once all the meat was gone. - I figure the mixture of apple, garlic, ginger and duck juice was what defined it. [said with poker faced eaernestness] In future I will put the gravey to one side and use it with the potato stuffing or generally all over the meal. The roast potatoes had a very decadent smack to it, I wished I had made more of them :(

That is all. I think Easter will be my next culinary excursion, I have not decided for certain though...

It's been a long time coming...

Woke up with symptoms of a cold, I'd avoided one since I was in China in August :(

Yummy Science

On Thursday (4th Dec) we had our Post Grad Christmas Party. Twas a fine event, much fun was to be had.

Julia and Gleb organised the festivities. It kicked off with a pool tournament. Strangely, probably an extension of the American belief in "everyone is a winner", there were prizes for anyone able who got into the second round [not to sound bitter or anything]. Britte and I were teamed together against Danielle and Sanket for the covetted Ms Germany. We lost :(
- The crowns bestowed on the winners had a Wurst on a fork.

Some guys played for a girl's heart. No names necessary.- The winners got crowns with hearts on them.

Other prizes:

• The True Blonde (the winner was not a true blonde, proving the system a sham)
• Mr Indian (the crown had the meme of the texting Indian on a motor bike)
• Mr & Mrs Cell Culture

... The other prizes escape me at the moment.

I take a quantum of solace [cue groans from reader at this point] in the fact that the tournament winners beat us in the first round, Britte and I could potentially be second place.

We dined on thai food, I had a tender, saucey duck and lovely upmarket spicey prawn crackers.

As is our Christmas tradition Rice and I got ourselves ice-cream to help boost our metabolism after our meal. As usual, when we invited others to come, our generous request was declined :'(

Jess wished for yoghurt to make all frozen. Here comes the science. Pay attention.

We got a six pack of yoghurt, raspberry yoghurt that is. Next we got some liquid nitrogen.

T_yog = 269K
T_N2 = 77 Kelvin^N₂

(No contest)

T₁ = 285 Kelvin
C_p,yog = XX J/kg/K
M_yog = XX kg
F_yog = XX J/kg

Q= M_yog [(C_p,yog (T₁-T_yog))+F]

L_N2=(5.56kJ/mol)/(28g/mol)=199J/g
M_N2=Q/L_N2

[Unfortunately the internet lacks reliable if any data on the properties of yoghurt, hopefully a would be young scientist will stumble on to this and do me a solid by finding these things out for me. Lacking the data I decided to put this baby to be before it became 2009, I've been unusually busy of late :(]

The yogurt was served using my spoon, which as yet has not been returned to me. Hopefully when I have the chance I can give some eyeball values for the heat capacity of yoghurt over christmas- I'll get my baby brothers to help because science is cool.

Excuse my failure to deliver for the time being

Tick tock, Clarice...

[Note: this is from last week]

I sit in my office [eating dinner without the aid of cutlery].¹

Little bit tired. Little bit wired.

I was in Brussels last weekend.

Friday : Got to sleep at about 0400. Woke up at 1200ish.

Saturday : Went of to the land of Nod at 0400ish. Got up 1300ish.

Sunday : Took the 0430ish slumber train to snoozeville. Got taxi from house at 0800.

Monday : My brain waves [presumably] dropped to the theta bandwidth at 2030. Woke up 1000ish.

Dé Mhairt [I did something to my keyboard, it won't let me use fadas now...]: Thit mé i mo choladh timpeall leathuair tar eis a ceathar. D'éirigh mé timpeall a haon déag.

Wednesday : I drifted off to Lalaland in the ephemeral moments between 2330ish and 0000ish. Ascended from the murky depths of lake Slumber at 0630.

Thursday : [At a loss for further descriptions of falling to sleep] at 0430ish. Gave a waking stretch at 1330.

I have been consistently going to sleep around 0000 and wake up at 0630 for training... Clearly my sleeping patterns were all over the place this week. I blame Brussels. 3 days of late/early sleep times. I am pretty sure I have given myself artificial jet lag.

My Circadian Rhythm (CR) has taken a gory beating. Hopefully I can set things back to normal over the weekend.²

If one peruses the link for CR, one will note one of the methods for monitoring the aforementioned process [I think it is a process as opposed to a phenomenon] is logging the core body temperature. Rectally.

"people must remain awake but calm and semi-reclined in near darkness while their rectal temperatures are taken continuously"

2 of 3 requirements isn't bad.

I feel sorry for the people who were test subjects for this technique seeing as Benloucif et al in Chicago found strong evidence that melatonin metabolite concentrations are more reliable for characterising CR.

¹See Yummy Science
²Got up this morning no problem!

You Win This Round! [shakes fist]

Went to Brussels the weekend past. So Gleb and I could reacquaint ourselves with with the common man, we took the airport bus instead of the aircoach.

Some adorable scamps, just out from school, got on the bus. They surrounded us, down the back. One of the scamps [hence forward known as "Punk Kid"] was making farting noises behind a woman's back. I got tired of this rather quickly. I told him to cop on. He turned around, eyeballed me and then Gleb, who was smiling, an image of Glasnost. I repeated myself and his stony glare jack-knifed back to me. [one of us was over his head]. He asked me what the problem was, and I told him he was annoying people. Nettled, he demanded to know who he was annoying. I told him that it was me. The riposte scored, the Punk Kid turned around without further comment.¹

He and his cronies sat before us in silence. Embarrassed? Maybe. Seething? Possibly. The y quietly gathered their bags and exitted in an orderly fashion. A few moments passed. The tannoy crackled: "Would the two men sitting at the back of the bus stop smoking and drinking!". We shrugged the announcement off, bewildered. Shortly thereafter, the bus driver ascended the the stairwell, stared directly at Gleb and I, and repeated his warning about drinking and smoking on the bus.

We were gobsmacked.
Wheels turned.

Clearly someone had made the baseless accusation...

In hindsight, the Punk Kid had taken the sleight rather well, particularly for a punk kid. Gleb and I marvelled at the vengeance served slightly chilled. I had always been of the opinion that the kids immature enough to make fart noises lacked the capacity for foresight and cool reasoning. Instead of F-ing and blinding his rage away at the first instance, he waited. The boy waited until he could get away Scot free, honour satisfied.

The boy will rule Dublin some day...

¹It was like something out of a thriller, except it revolved around fart noises, a skinny little kid and a man probably twice his body weight :/