Playing with my hair

This time trying to tie them together...actually I wanted to have ponytail since I decided to have long hair couple of years ago. However I've been failing many times in the past simply because my hair was not long enough. Until earlier this week Lucky Star (anime) episode 3 comes out....

This is Tsukasa, one of the four main characters in this anime.
Note the length of her hair. It's shorter than mine!

Another main character, Konata. They were talking about
"the day of ponytail" in Japan. Somehow they decided to try it themselves

"Mini" ponytail. My hair is longer than hers,
so why not give it a try?

So off I go~

Just to give you an idea how long my hair is right now.

Luckily I have everything I need at hand.
No need to go out and buy the rubber band, ahaha.

After some kind of battle.
Is it just my delusion? Why is it so short?
My hair should be longer....

Ughuu, so there is only one conclusion: the anime somehow is not right. Well, at least I have the mini-version right now. Maybe I should wait another couple of months and try it again.

ps. this is so hard. I almost sprained my neck for this. It still hurts >__<

Braid

Sasha suggested that I could try that, so I've been trying.....

Man, this is hard

Is my hair too short or is it that I just need more practice? Ughuu, every time I tried, it fell apart from the bottom, making my hair look messy, as if I just tied them together roughly. Also how do you prevent stray hair from sticking out?

Neuroscience class

The oral presentation is canceled, simply because that there are too many students, and it would take too much time for everybody to do a 15-minute presentation. The poor graduate students still have to do it though, ahaha.

Instead there is an 8-10 page paper to write (in 20 days!). Could still be a hassle, but definitely better than oral presentation.

Telescope

The telescope broke again, it's been acting weird this week.
I want the galaxy.....

We do have a last resort, but I don't really want to use it: go outside, take the telescope off from the motor, hold the telescope (by hand) to point to the direction we want, and take data. That could be a pain. It is a parabolic dish with diameter 2.3 meters, and I expect it to be heavy.

Well, maybe it'll feel better tomorrow.

It's boring to wait...

...so I decided to post some random things.

When I get back to my dorm 6pm yesterday, I was quite surprised to hear a band practicing "God Knows." I thought initially that not too many people watched anime around here. If I had a "OBEY" printout at hand I would put it on the door secretly to give them a surprise :p


The umbrella I bought in La Crosse was broken by the wind! It went fine when I went out to the rain, then a strong wind came....nothing happened except an angle didn't look quite right. Five minutes later, without strong wind, the umbrella freaked out suddenly. It looks like trash now :( The other one I bought three years ago in Taiwan is much more better. The price is about the same, but it has special design that even if the surface of the umbrella bent to the opposite direction, it can be bent back unscathed. It has also much less weight, but not the cool button that can open/close the umbrella though. Well endurance is more important.

By the way, Dawsen I think I found your umbrella.

Experiment XD

I'm in the lab right now to observe Jupiter~ Probably a bit later would be better though, about 3am I think?

Next time for part of the galaxy is Tuesday morning at 6am XD

Konata + Haruhi

Found here: link

Original version

Wait....gif won't move by default? Oh well, click on the image to see it move.

pcsx2 new version

Surprise! Now the music works! Directly from the plug-in that comes with the install program. There is also no need to fiddle with the settings to get it work (like before). It's also getting much more fluent now and quite playable. It probably won't be long before the PS2 emulator is fully functional.


Speaking of this, about one year ago I played part of MO5 half-speed plus ad hoc music XD

GRE Physics

Test finally over ^^

Well I shouldn't 've used the word "finally", as I'm not too worry about this exam until Thursday evening. I'll probably get more than 900 out of 990, but how much exactly depends on my carefulness and luck.

I felt that this exam is kind of pointless though. There are 100 problems to do within the 170 minute limit. Once an exam becomes a test of quick-response, endurance (as in quantity of problems, not deepness) and carefulness, it's not anymore testing how good your (basic) physics is. We don't need to respond that quickly in actual research. The way of thinking should be more important. Maybe a decrease of problems and increase in depth would be better.

The "purple book" for GRE Physics

The same book as in the last post.

After doing the first practice exam in this book, I hated this book even more.

Put aside the printing mistakes, there are a lot of "calculation" problems which can be solved quickly if you have a calculator. But that's not allowed in a real exam.

There are also lots of weird laws and models that I don't think is needed: Richardson-Dushman law, the law of Dulong and Petit, Debye's law, Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation, Kronig-Penney model, Mooseley's law, etc. I do encounter most of them in solid state class or more advanced quantum mechanics class (which is more advanced than the undergraduate quantum courses of other universities) though, but it's just wrong to put those in a practice exam. There are even problems which requires you to remember the formula.

Conclusion for anyone who wants to prepare for GRE physics: don't use this book as the main source.

GRE Physics prep book (REA)

Not a friendly book at all. There are a lot of unexplained terms and just given as granted. If you have remembered enough details the book could be used as a review list, otherwise don't use it.

For example, they talked about RL circuit, and immediately go to the formula. However the inductor (L) has not been introduced yet. The next line is the general solution, looking rather complex.

There are also some flashy formula throwing out at the reader without mentioning the core (basic) idea. Things could be a lot easier if those are used. I'm guessing that the author is too clever and thinks that everybody should learn the basic rules by heart. But, you know, I haven't touched some topics in a while.

If someone wants to use this book to cram themselves before the exam, it will be hell with 80 pages worth of formula to remember.

Photos Uploaded!

The photos from spring break is uploaded to my web album at http://picasaweb.google.com/FHeadFHead. I deleted some photos that would require prior permission from others. I might release that in the future XD. Facebook only allow 60 pictures to be uploaded at once, and it will be a hassle to put them there. There's no plan to upload the photos there.

I'm quite surprised that the whole thing took only about 50MB, much less than the quota 1GB, so I uploaded also the photos from last year when I went to Germany, which is another 60MB or so.

Sound on Windows vista

I finally managed to install sound on windows vista on my notebook computer. The speaker also works! The microphone doesn't seem to function yet. This consolidates my thought of making it an entertainment center. (The Japanese XP on this computer starts to crash last week though, gotta fix it or reinstall it)

On my other notebook things didn't go well. Although there is driver support for vista from the manufacturer, the system crashes whenever I tried to install it. Headphones worked before, but after I tried to install driver for the speaker, the computer became silent at once. It might not be a bad idea to leave it as it is though, if that's for work.

Fly (continued)

Well I think the fly is sleeping.

I started to work on my physics paper, and got a bit thirsty after a while. I've forgot about it already, so I took the bottle up and drink some water. Hey, the fly is sitting still. Why doesn't it escape? There's no cure to stupidity. Stay there for a couple more hours then.

* that sentence is a famous quote from stupidclown

Fly

This is the best flash movie I've seen in a while. The title is Shoo Fly, created by John Su (Mousekliks). Google him if you want, but I think this is the best (and most recent) one from this author.

By the way, the flies here are kind of dumb. I just captured one using the bottom of a bottle. Yes, it's bottom, not inside. So right now the bottle is standing on the table, with the fly in between XD. I'm still considering what to do with it. Probably just release it when I'm about to leave, ahaha.

velocity difference

I don't know what to post, so I decided to put something completely random. Here's a hypothesis of the velocity difference distribution (*) of two people walking by each other: the distribution will be a bell-shaped Gaussian curve with a minimum near zero. The gap will be bigger if the two know each other.

Assumption: the distribution of a person walking speed is Gaussian.

So the velocity difference between two different people will also be Gaussian distributed, which is the envelope of the curve. The hypothesis is then it's harder to pass other person with low relative speed, and it's even harder with familiar people. This causes the minimum around zero.

===footnote===
(*): defined only when they are passing each other




what's the point of this? I don't know..... I'm guessing that physics experiment analysis has made me weird.

Midterm

I'm really surprised at what I got for midterm exams. Maybe I was too lucky this time. I just hope I have enough luck left for the rest of the semester ^^"

In the neuroscience exam I fotgot which brain areas are involved in the mirror system, so I randomly guessed three numbers, and somehow I got it right. This is just wrong.... As for the string theory test, I couldn't figure out one of the problem, but somehow my weird guess turned out to be correct again. I still don't know why it is right. The problem is writing out the integral formula for the area on the surface, but....hey, the answer is not even reparameterization invariant, how could it be correct? I can use a different parameterization and get a different area value for the same surface. Something doesn't look right.

Back to life~

This blog is kind of deserted ^^"

Last week was our spring break, and I went to Minneapolis, la Crosse, Chicago and UIUC with my friends. Now I'm finally back to normal. My luggage arrived two days after my final flight, nothing lost. I'll post some travel diary articles after I'm done with the mountain of schoolwork which was left behind.