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May 29, 2003
[i love the time and
[i love the time and inbetween]
so, becuase it seems to be in my blood, and becuase i enjoy those that work on things like this, i am now sitting on the student publications board at school. tonight was my first meeting with them. the board is like 8 members (3 student, 2 faculty, an alum and someone else). but the other people way our numbered us. basically everyone in charge of something has to give a report.
of course, something things in stu pubs remain the same not matter where you go. but the nuances are different. the newspaper is a daily, which makes me wonder if the editor ever sleeps. the yearbook is a spring book.
of course, being immersed back in that world this evening brought back lots of memories of being on the other side of the reports.
so i got all caught up in the phone last night and didn't get to finish this thought.
starting again in a way back in the stu pubs board reminded me of starting in the stu pubs world at tech. the first moments (and first meetings) where you really didn't know anyone. the the in between where you are starting to know people. and then the end when you are someone to be known. each of those periods have its own magic.
i wonder if i would have stuck with producation staff had christina honea and i not hit it off so well. i remember laughing so hard those tuesday night. back when i didn't know the value the thrusday production staff. back when some girl named leta was the thrusday morning value. strange how people who were just names to you become people, beathing, alive, important to you and you to them.
i am trying to remember how the nique was back then to me - before it became my world. when editors were distant things. went i spent lots of time in the harrison study longue trying to make sense of calc and chem (oh, how i wish my learning was that simple again). when liz and i would watch dawson's from the top of my bed and laugh at my roommate's wall o' pictures. we like to make biscuits. i had forgotten how we liked to make those biscuits in a can. we would split a can. we would also order papa john's cheese bread. there are few things better than hot cheese bread on a cold night in the basment of harrison during finals week.
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Posted by christina at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
if for some reason you
if for some reason you are checking this past for updates - i've started posting again to christinagtnwu.blogspot.com
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Posted by christina at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2003
[waiting patiently / for the
[waiting patiently / for the right raindrop to set them free]
can you tell that i am so tired of work that i am all about the random things in my life. good thing for you becuase here's some of the result.
rain filled the afternoon. i opened my office window to let the smell in and to hear the thunder.
- today's other highlights -
something that was broken fixed itself
the perfect box was found for a gift
i was reminded how much i enjoy coffee in the morning thanks to free coffee and donuts in the lobby cuz of ford's engineering week (i usually drink tea in the mornings)
i was reminded that i am just a little too post modern in my thinking to be a true scientist
turns out, clartin is something that body can't live without
carter and the comment button do not have synergy
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Posted by christina at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2003
[To my surprise / And
[To my surprise / And my delight / I saw a sunrise / I saw a sunlight]
i don't know if there are just no tulips in the south, but i don't remember them. i remember the start of spring being signified with the appearance of daffodils, but tulips remained something exotic to be brought at the store - like roses.
there are so many tulips here - in every color. they are so beautiful. i think last week they had tulip day downtown where they gave away free tulips blubs. i've started driving to school lately for a variety of reasons, one being that it is an absolutely beautiful 10 min drive. i drive up the coast line and for a good bit of it have beautiful views of the lake. we gets lots of sun nowdays as we rumble to the solstice. in the evening the sun shines from the west on the water and makes it this amazingly blue color. the surface is dotted with white sailboats. the beaches opened this past weekend and people walk in the wave and picnic in the parks. (note - it is still not warm enough that i would be able to sit outside without every part of my body being encased in clothing. at least now chicagoians agree that the chilliness is ridiculous and therefore gives me hope for the future.)
the other thing i admire while i drive is all the tulips. there are these purple ones at this corner that i have to stop for a stop sign and i admire them and want to take them home with me - but alas, i take only the memory. i should take a picture. they are that beautiful. i think i might do that someday. maybe next spring. take pictures of tulips for my walls.
i also like to watch all the people walk there dogs. and kids. there are a fair amount of small children in evanston. and way more dogs. i love it. there is a guy who lives in my building that has a three legged dog. it is soooo cute. it is missing one of its front legs and trots along just fine without it. i love to laugh at it. steve chastises me. Steve lives around the corner and we ran into the three legged dog on the way to his apartment for some west wing. we share the love of the west wing. i tell him i'm laughing with the dog, not at it. hmmm, that is also a point i should probably have made to my officemate today when i just started laughing at him. oh well, better he know the truth than i lie. (cuz i was laughing at him)
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Posted by christina at 8:13 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2003
recently i have been meditating
recently i have been meditating more than usual on the concept of big and better.
i was explaining my research to one of the admin people in my department early this week. she was asking about application of the my stable low friction films. i like to "big picture" it as saying, well, you can use it on train track and train wheels as to reduce the friction between them. she asked if that would be to make the trains go faster. i paused, and said, well, yes, it could make your trains go faster, but i prefer to look at it as more of a reduction in energy consumption of the process. the less energy you loss to friction, the less energy you need to move the train. i said that, to me, faster is not necessarily better. you are already going fast. the faster you go the big the disaster if/when something happens.
i am also researching the future of magnetic storage for my nanotechnology class. as we all know, the amount of storage available has sky rockets in the past couple of years while the price has fallen drastically. but we are reaching the limit of magnetic technology because of the superparamagnetic limit. there is a all sorts of research going on in alternative storage capabilities. but once again is bigger better? i read a very interesting column in the american scientist (http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14750) that points an interesting perspective on it.
excerpt -
Something more than ongoing technological progress is needed to make multiterabyte disks a reality. We also need the data to fill them.
A few people and organizations already have a demonstrated need for such colossal storage capacity. Several experiments in physics, astronomy and the earth sciences will generate petabytes of data in the next few years, and so will some businesses. But these are not mass markets. The economics of disk-drive manufacturing require selling disks by the hundred million, and that can happen only if everybody wants one.
Suppose I could reach into the future and hand you a 120-terabyte drive right now. What would you put on it? You might start by copying over everything on your present disk—all the software and documents you've been accumulating over the years—your digital universe. Okay. Now what will you do with the other 119.9 terabytes?
A cynic's retort might be that installing the 2012 edition of Microsoft Windows will take care of the rest, but I don't believe it's true. "Software bloat" has reached impressive proportions, but it still lags far behind the recent growth rate in disk capacity. Operating systems and other software will occupy only a tiny corner of the disk drive. If the rest of the space is to be filled, it will have to be with data rather than programs.
One certainty is that you will not fill the void with personal jottings or reading matter. In round numbers, a book is a megabyte. If you read one book a day, every day of your life, for 80 years, your personal library will amount to less than 30 gigabytes, which still leaves you with more than 119 terabytes of empty space. To fill any appreciable fraction of the drive with text, you'll need to acquire a major research library. The Library of Congress would be a good candidate. It is said to hold 24 million volumes, which would take up a fifth of your disk (or even more if you choose a fancier format than plain text).
Other kinds of information are bulkier than text. A picture, for example, is worth much more than a thousand words; for high-resolution images a round-number allocation might be 10 megabytes each. How many such pictures can a person look at in a lifetime? I can only guess, but 100 images a day certainly ought to be enough for a family album. After 80 years, that collection of snapshots would add up to 30 terabytes.
What about music? MP3 audio files run a megabyte a minute, more or less. At that rate, a lifetime of listening—24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 80 years—would consume 42 terabytes of disk space.
The one kind of content that might possibly overflow a 120-terabyte disk is video. In the format used on DVDs, the data rate is about 2 gigabytes per hour. Thus the 120-terabyte disk will hold some 60,000 hours worth of movies; if you want to watch them all day and all night without a break for popcorn, they will last somewhat less than seven years. (For a full lifetime of video, you'll have to wait for the petabyte drive.)
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Posted by christina at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)