Come in and Burn

Progress

Sat, 02 May 2009 17:36:00-0700

Progress: 1 pull-up instead of 3, (I'm still just a beginner at crossfit), 198 lbs. instead of 211 lbs., Purdue Village World Cup victor (Team Djibouti), found an error in a publication I was basing some of research on, corrected it and emailed the author, made serious progress on my simulation AND my thesis, reduction in shin splints, eating and cooking much better.

It's been a good month. Justin, 90 push-ups total is pretty tough and I'm not even talking about doing them in a row. My fitness is still pathetic and I'm working to the point where you and I can compete in a crossfit workout and you won't totally dismantle me. Stupid in shape friends. My favorite crossfit workout to date is "Cindy": 3 pull-ups, 6 push-ups, 9 air squats for 15 minutes. Count number of rounds you can do. I'm weak so I can only do around 14. I'll start getting up there, I need to weigh less!

Stuff I like to think about: I'm getting into Dynamical Systems which is the analysis of differential equations. Dynamical Systems as they pertain to neural systems is what I'm looking at. I'm also looking at Linear Circuit Analysis (electrical engineering) because I need to know that language for neural circuitry. What I really want to do is use genetic algorithms to evolve some novel neural architecture and test it but I've gotta do this thesis and paper stuff first.

Spring Break

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:16:00-0700

For spring break I took the weekend off, which I do sometimes anyway so I guess I'm not really doing anything special. I saw Watchmen with Em and I have to say I liked it but I don't think many people will. I think they just tried to put too much in the the movie from the comic.

My advisor is on vacation for the next week and I have a lot of stuff to do. The simulation is slowly coming together and I'm happy to be writing it from scratch instead of using a neural simulator someone else wrote. I'm an old man and therefore love C and dislike most other languages for being too fancy-pants (who needs objects?!). My next task is to add NMDA receptors onto my neuron. NMDARs are slick because it's thought that they play a central role in storing memory because they can detect the interval between when to "connected" neurons fire. That's a big deal because Hebb proposed that's how stuff learns quite a while ago. I'm currently reading up on some of the experimental data for these little buggers. I'm also constantly complaining about biologists and their stupid units. I read a paper that had current (Amperes-chare per unit time-Coulombs/Seconds) with units of moles/seconds. WTF?! I figured out where they got it from but, ehhh, gross. SI people, use it! Do biologists hate dimensional analysis? Patience? Sarah? Your answers!?!

My team and I got our asses handed to use by the semi-pros again. They are just faster, stronger, and more intense than us. It sucks. I played better after being thrown to the ground with no foul called. I'm working out with a friend of mine (Russian) who does not mess around. We're doing interval training and I almost puked last week. I design the workouts and he bests me at them. It's a good system.

Em and I are thinking late fall for the wedding but we've gotta get the barest of details straightened out with her mom. I'm fine with whatever but there will be a debate between the two of them, that much is certain. Me? I plan to lie low. j/k (half)

The Weekend

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:18:00-0700

It's Sunday night and it's been a nice weekend. Em and I hung out with her older brother Tim, her parents, and her niece and nephew. I have to say kids can be fun. They're about 3 now so I'm pretty comfortable interacting with them without worrying about their heads popping off or anything. I like making up semi-impossible games for them to play. I especially love lying to kids about why I'm done playing for a bit. It's really because I've been playing for a while and I want to do something else but I make up something better. Sometimes I tell them that I need to meditate and then cross my legs Indian style. They of course have no idea what the hell is going on so they keep harassing me. Other times I tell them I can't play dinosaurs anymore because I once got bit by one a while ago and now I'm afraid of them. I also tell them that I have to work, which involves me clicking buttons on my computer. My love of lying to children originated with my grandpa on my mom's side.

He told me: "There is a river monster across the river in my backyard. It could eat you at any time." "I have a third eye in the back of my head that I can see you with." (rear-view mirror in car) "If you are to become injured, you should douse the injury in gasoline for good health." "That rock you're holding is an obvious dinosaur fossil. It looks to be a petrified dinosaur turd." My favorite (that my mom also uses) is: Annoying Kid: What are we having for dinner? Grandpa: Hummingbird's tongue on toast. I hope you like it. Annoying Kid: I hate you! I'm going to run laps around the house and pretend I'm a ninja. Grandpa: Fair enough.

Other than that my life is pretty good. I played 4 soccer matches in 7 days and my knee feels fine. Hopefully next week I'll get back on board with the working out and eating.

Science

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:37:00-0700

What's up all? Justin, no worries man, I was just kidding around. Sarah and I had a running gag about that whole Kate Nash thing. It's fun! The Flight of the Conchords are quite awesome. "Why can't a heterosexual guy tell a heterosexual guy that his booty is fly!?" Have you heard the Bowie's in Space song yet? Hilarious. If you don't already have the soundtrack, I've got it.

I can't tell you guys how interesting my research has been lately! Really crazy! How do the ion channels and second messenger chemical pathways come together in a neuron to make someone permanently form a memory!? (A memory would constitute the strengthening or weakening of a synapse between two neurons in response to some stimuli) There are also long term genetic changes that take place that help new synapses form. If I wanted to encode my memories on a machine I'd have some serious issues. The simulation of chemical diffusion, enzymatic chemical reactions, and the electrostatics/electrodynamics of nerve impulses can be done (however not yet on the scale of our entire brain but we'll get there). What really screws ya is the protein synthesis and gene transcription (not sure about that last one, leave me alone, I'm not quite a biologist). Each neuron can be in a uniquely different "gene expression state". Shit! That is tricky. I've known this for a while, but it was especially evident in some of my simulations lately. So if you want to encode a memory, you need to encode all the relevant states of the neuron at that time, including genetic state and protein synthesis considerations.

I'm fully operational again soon! Maybe next week! I can't wait to get out there on the field and run around and feel generally ill (at first)! I'll give crossfit another whirl. My longest crossfit streak is 2-3 weeks. There are a small group of people getting together in the evenings that I may try to meet with. They are all undergrads! Their youth makes me fiery and unbalanced! Actually, most things make me fiery and unbalanced. (toasters, verb tenses, dr. pepper)

Have you people that have read the Sword of Truth series (I have not) heard of the tv show called "Legend of the Seeker?" It's based on the SoT series. Emily, who has read/listened to almost the whole SoT series, and I watched the first episode. Apparently it takes many liberties as Emily was quick to point out... repeatedly. :-P I'm not sure I dig it, but I was mostly amused. It's on Hulu.

Updates

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:26:00-0700

Hey all! Sorry for the lag in communications, school stuff, then social stuff, and then school stuff again has kept me away. Anyways, the big news that most of you already know is that I'm engaged! (As of Dec. 16th, '08) I popped the question on her birthday, after a dinner I cooked for her. She thought she was getting a sweatshirt/hoodie and she got a ring instead. She was surprised to say the least and said yes. So that's good! We haven't set a date and are dreading wedding planning.

Hrmm, I'm done with taking classes (again, but for good this time). I took "The Fundamentals of Supercomputing" and got an A-. Yes, that's right people, Purdue now uses pluses and minuses for grades, it's weird. Anyways, that course will look good on my CV so I'm glad I took it.

My knee injury won't be healed for a bit, but it won't get worse if I play on it so I'm playing on it starting February. My knee will just hurt until it's healed, which is ok with me. It'll be fun to get back in shape and stuff. I guess I'm just the type of person who likes to obsess about stuff and get really into it. Emily and I are cooking more together and even cooked for 8 hours straight a few weekends ago. We cooked enough dinners for two weeks! Fun experiment.

Research is going ok. I can't stand having this publication 95% done but I haven't had the will power to finish it. My second research interest is picking up pace and I believe it will get me my first post-doc position. That is if I'm able to publish on this subject matter (multi-cell compartmental models of spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) with long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD)). Geez, these biologists and their acronyms.

Surprisingly, my thesis work and related projects have been more interesting than video games. Saturday night I found myself at my computer writing a neuron simulator from scratch. This is good. In fact, I'm writing the simulation so that I can port it to a supercomputer in the future if that's what I decide. I'm also doing some reading to fill in some of the many gaps in my neuroscience education.

Over the past few months I've watched the anime series "Blue Gender" (enjoyed but don't recc.) and began "Death Note." For those who haven't seen it (Death Note), I promise it's good! Also, for those not super into fantasy-type stuff, you will still like Death Note! Also just finished watching season 3 of the IT Crowd which is amazing (UK sitcom). I don't feel there are very many good movies out. I really just want to see the Wrestler and Gran Torino. In the music scene I admitted to Sarah that I like Kate Nash. Here's what people must understand: I am incredibly masculine. Cigarettes smoke ME after THEY have sex. Think about that! I was walking to school one day and the Predator (TM) came up to me asked for my autograph. That's masculinity. My face doesn't need to be shaved everyday. "Wait, Kris!" you say, "that's not masculinity." No ... you ... it is! The hair is too afraid to grow on my face. Yeah, that's the truth of it. But seriously, Kate Nash is very charming and warms my extremely manly heart.

Update!

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:24:00-0700

Finally, another update. I have no excuse but I will apologize: sorry! :-P Hrm, did we all notice my updates pretty much stopped once the semester really got rolling? I finished all the classes my adviser and the graduate school wanted me to take last year. I signed up for "Fundamentals of Parallel Computing" a.k.a. "How to Program Supercomputers" this semester because it will make my C.V. look really cool. Geez, it's a harder and more time-consuming than I'd like. I'm almost finished and I'll have some really cool code to show anyone (no one) interested. Needless to say this is the last class I'll be taking. At least the course number sounds impressive: MA692D

My research is going pretty well. I gave my final draft to my adviser a month ago and he's working through it himself. It's almost out of my hands (I will probably make some final changes). I feel pretty good about the paper dubbed "Pub1" in my (and my laptop's) memory banks.

I'm working on Pub2 but I'm only at the very beginning stages. I'm working on how mice (and humans) learn now! Yes, I've jumped from leeches to humans. This subject is cutting edge and I'll be really happy if I can any publication in this field. The keyword you could google if you were curious (you're not) would be "Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity." Happily, I can't think of anything more interesting (to me) than this subject. Understanding this type of learning will lead to a bunch of great things (I have no doubt). I have wanted to study this stuff since I heard about it 4 years ago. Honestly, I don't know how I get this lucky. I thought I was supposed to be feeling burnt out?

I did Crossfit for 3 weeks at the beginning of the semester at the (incredibly over-crowded and borderline useless) Purdue RSC. Things were going well and then that supercomputing course started and I obtained a knee-injury playing in a 3 vs. 3 soccer tournament. It's a knee sprain but just like the ankle it will take time to heal. I only play soccer once a week now. Bummer. On the bright side, it is healing. So, I have failed my fitness goals this semester. Also, Levee Fitness in West Lafayette is becoming officially certified in Crossfit and will have a dedicated Crossfit room! I'm really excited because I still need guidance on some of those lifts and you can't find a chin-up bar in all of the Purdue RSC?! Is that unbelievable or what!? They should be ready for Crossfit at the beginning of January. I can't wait!

Comments on some other people's posts: Sarah: you seem to enjoy teaching; why? j/k It is pretty darned fun isn't it? I'm only tutoring this semester but it's still a good time. It's too bad about the (kinda) wasted salamander decapitation. You should just pretend he was a salamander war criminal or something. War criminals are totally into decapitations. Biology is icky, computers considerably less so. Justin: you're a running bastard aren't you? Brett: gay marriage should be legal everywhere in the U.S. The reason it's not is because we lack a separation of church and state. To the state, marriage is a legally binding agreement (romantic, isn't it?) and to a religion, marriage is a sacred sacrament defined and given by God. I'm fine with churches defining marriage for themselves. I'm not fine with churches defining marriage for people outside of their church.

June 2004

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:55:00-0700

Hrm. In June 2004, I believe I had re-enrolled at Purdue to get that PhD in physics. At the time I was getting my ass handed to me in physics 600 (Mathematical Methods for Physicists) and living at Hawkins Gradhouse. What a shit-hole. Em was pretty depressed. What would follow would be the worst two years of my life (In case you're wondering, my senior year undergrad takes second place after these). I would gain around 40 lbs., hit a life-time self esteem low, and do practically nothing, athletically speaking. I would feel a bit bad for myself and (rather unfortunately) have enough perspective to realize that, as a middle class white male living in the U. S. of A, I really had it pretty fucking good. In fact, I had it much better than a great deal of the world population.

The knowledge that I was a pansy drifting in a sea of other pansies that didn't know how good they had it only made me feel a bit worse. But let's be honest, I didn't think about that point too often. To underline my point I'll say that although I realized getting a 1/25 on a Statistical Mechanics Exam didn't mean too much in the grand scheme of things, it still hurt some when people made fun of me in class in front of anyone. I also realized I was a little narcissistic but felt better when I realized most people are (at least a little). I found out I wasn't as great at writing as I'd always thought (obviously!) and I swear too much.

I further refined my coping skills. I learned one method from Ted in my last year of undergrad:

Method #1: The Box Method
I own two mental boxes. One box contains everything I can do something about, the other contains everything else. I try to worry only about the contents in the former. Realizing what you can't change is important.

I learned method #2 in my first year of grad school. It's pretty dumb and its usefulness is debatable. It really only helps people with an "adversarial" personality, like myself. By this I mean people who complete tasks better when actually competing with another human being as opposed to themselves, or road conditions, or a particular mass of rock one may be climbing. It may be a mental construction but the compulsion feels as real as anything. I think pretty much everyone runs faster in races against people rather than the clock but I'm talking about something more ... comprehensive.

Method #2: Fist Method
Step #1: Identify the problem, like an important task or abstract issue.
Step #2: Perform personification of problem. Give the problem a name, a mind, a motive.
Step #3: Allow the possibility of multiple problems conspiring against you on purpose. Collusion! How impressive it will be when you defeat them all!
Step #4: Announce to friends, co-workers, and innocent bystanders your intent to defeat aforementioned issue.
Step #5: Take whichever issue is most important and WORK on it. During your (frequent) breaks, imagine yourself beating the living crap out of the personified problem.
Step #6: Continue until all problems are completed or you have admitted defeat.
Step #7: Announce victory or failure to aforementioned parties. It is cooler to admit defeat, which is good because I was defeated more often than not.

Finally, I learned to not take myself too seriously. No matter how "mature", "clever", or "determined" I felt myself to be in writing something down, it always seems just kind of funny when I come across it a few years later. This post is no exception.

Research Continues

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:30:00-0700

Research continues! We consulted with our biologist friend and she's allayed our fears about having neurons with slightly different behavior than the ones in her lab. We're moving on! She has also mentioned some great comments on neurotransmitter diffusion. Altogether, it was a great meeting and I think I can move forward with a bit more confidence.

Scored to goals in the pick up match I played in yesterday! Starting to get my touch back. Didn't get yelled at by crazy Italian at all. People should understand that this is an incredible compliment. I continue to practice crossfit lifts and move forward. I'll share a google doc with everyone when I'm fully into it.

I've uploaded a new muxtape! The service continues to grow and it's a fun little thing to do. http://mandelcat.muxtape.com

Vacation Week

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:26:00-0700

No research or working out (too much) this week. I'm back in Cleveland (the cultural center of the universe) for the week for a friend's wedding. My Mom and sister are also going to Europe for a week so I thought I'd come home before they leave. A good friend of mine is also off all this week. It's a perfect time to come home and do stuff.

I, like Brett, saw the Happening and thought the suspense aspect was great as usual. The story was pretty original and overall I was entertained. I'm sure many people will hate it though.

I Played a soccer match today with my dad and it was a good time. Seeing a 60 year old guy running around playing soccer with a mix of 20, 30, 40, and 50 year olds is pretty impressive. He's a tank and almost took off some jerk's ankle. The guy wasn't nice anyways so I laughed at him and said, "don't worry buddy, just ice the hell outta it when you go home". Afterwards, Jeff (the friend), my dad, and I drove down to the yacht club's clubhouse and hung out for a few hours. It's nothing fancy but it's a fun hangout.

My other sister recently graduated from John Carroll University with a bio degree and is starting her new job as a hospital tech this week. I'm excited for her. John Carroll was composed mainly of stuck up rich kids who wore those God-damned Northface Fleece jackets. It's fine if you own one. It's not fine if you're a total d-bag. And yes, I do realize I mentioned yacht club and then proceeded to call OTHER people stuck up and rich. Believe me, this yacht club isn't ritzy or anything. My dad's sail boat is only 24 feet or something. Our man-slave, Jubari-Yo, does do a bang up job on the shoe shining though. The dude's really gotta cut it out with the leopard-print loin clothe garb; tacky! Doesn't he know you don't wear leopard-print after Boxer's Day?

I finished an absolutely brilliant work by Greg Egan called Diaspora which I will now ruin for you all because I'm 95% sure none of you will read it. People have digitized themselves (no laughing, you know I love it) and they live inside of spaceships that orbit the earth. New people are created by the system (polis) and are therefore sexless although you have other options too. The pronouns for these people are ve (instead of he) and ver (instead of her). Love it already! They get bored living for so long and do some physics. They find out there are 6 hidden dimensions. So we live in a 4 + 6 dimensional universe. DO NOT TRY TO PICTURE IT. You can't, it's like trying to imagine what infrared "looks" like. So they're chilling out looking for intelligent life and they find a planet that's kinda bronzed (complete with living breathing kinda bronzed animals) by an alien race. They look closer and find some messed up neutrons. They "tug" on the neutrons and escape to a different universe. This universe has 6 normal dimensions and 4 hidden ones! They do it 5 more times and find themselves in a different universe each time. In the 7th universe they find an alien artifact too information-dense to decipher. Each artifact leads to where the alien civilization next went. They keep jumping to these different universes and finding artifacts left over by this alien race, each time hoping to catch up to these aliens and have a beer. So they jump through hundreds of trillions of universes (not an exaggeration). And then ... nothing! What happened?! Where did the alien race go? Why did they stop!? Turns out, each artifact was a computation. The aliens jumped through 6 different universes and then thought about what they had seen for 100's of trillions of clock cycles! The artifacts also fit together, and represent a sort of sculpture that spans trillions of universes! They form a model of the artifacts and fit them together (in a simulation of course) and what is it? It's a sculpture of the aliens! It's got 4 arms and 4 legs and the 4th arm is reaching to the heavens. Reaching towards the multitude of parallel universes the aliens will never get to visit. Worlds they'll never walk on. Sunsets they'll never see. The aliens dubbed the "transmuters" had seen six parallel universes, thought about it for trillions of clock cycles and then decided they had seen enough, lived enough, felt enough and had simply stopped. Terrible and beautiful! Could I get bored over a millions of lifetimes? Would I choose to not exist? Would I finally finish grad school?

Crossfit Day 7

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:24:00-0700

Today I had my first match back. The ankle held up fine but I have some light pain when stretching or compressing it to its extremes (not from the game). Stuff is still a bit tight and healing I suppose. Overall it feels great. My touch was a little of but ok. My fitness was down in the gutters. What did I expect? No cardio, all fatty-o, I mean it was bound to happen. I do so love hitting the lows in life.

Crossfit is going ok. I humbled myself by going to the RSC and was shown how to do two lifts. The backsquat is the first, it's pretty easy and I can already do it with great form and a reasonable amount of weight. Now, the hanging clean and hanging power clean are another matter. They require more coordination and a similar level of caution. So far I've practiced them with just the bar in the RSC (and felt like a total douche bag). I may try them with weight tomorrow or sometime else this week. I can't do some of the WOD's. Those that don't require the technical lifts I can do, albeit scaled down. The truth is my fitness is shit. Being true to myself will prevent physical injury and result in only minor bruising to my ego. It may also bring about some mockery (I mean have you seen someone just deadlifting just the bar?) but I can handle that.

Goals for this week:
complete a WOD (with warmup)
learn two new crossfit lifts
do hanging cleans and hanging power cleans with weight!

Crossfit Day 1

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:45:00-0700

Crossfit Day 1: Workout of the Day (WOD): Rest Day

So I started Crossfit today, and because I'm really good I was able to complete today's workout of ... nothing. Ha, ok, so it was officially a rest day but I still did some stuff. First off, it's the end of the 6 weeks so my ankle should be ok, right? Well, I got a soccer ball and got some touches on the ball for around 20 minutes. Dribbling, sprinting, cutting, long balls, short passes were no issue. It took me 15 minutes to get enough nerve to actually shoot (with correct form) because I was afraid my ankle would blow out. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and took a solid shot and ... nothing bad happened! Which is good. I was wearing a small ankle brace (no plastic, all fabric) but I still fell that tendon get tighter than usual. If I move my ankle in the correct way I can feel it tighten with no pain. I think this makes sense because the tendon may have healed tighter so I'm not going to worry about it too much. I'm going to wait until Thursday to play soccer again.

I attempted the crossfit warmup also. It consisted of: 3 sets of: the Samson Stretch, 10-15 pushups, 10-15 air squats, 10-15 pull-ups, 10-15 dips, 10-15 situps, and 10-15 back extensions. My pullups were pathetic. I did like 5 instead of 10 each set ... AND I still had to break them up into sets of 2 or 3. LOL sets of 2 or 3! Come on! Nothing else gave me a problem. I didn't do dips or back extensions because the machines were in a different room. So yeah, pretty pathetic performance. I talked to the trainers at the RSC and was told if I wanted to be shown some exercise I could just ask and it would be free of charge. I hope to come every day for a few weeks with the WOD and ask to be shown the tricky lifts until I can do all the lifts without coaching.

The 9 weeks (recall I reinjured the ankle) I spent eating bad stuff was both good and bad. My weight sky-rocketed to 191.8 lbs but I got so much research done! I'm not disheartened that my weight went up. Diets are for losing weight and changes in lifestyle are for maintaining the correct weight. I'm not worried about maintaining the correct diet when I'm playing soccer because I can cheat a lot and not eat too well and I won't have to pay too much for it. Plus, what kind of person would I be if I just shared my successes with my friends and not my failures!? Come on, you gotta love failures! So far my eating has been flawless today. We'll see what tomorrow brings. I probably won't be able to complete a full WOD for some time. Who cares? I'm in no rush! I just want to be healthy!

Stats:
WOD: Rest Day
weight: 191.8 lbs
body fat percentage: I'll post it later

Wrist Cysts and Programming Adventures

Sat, 31 May 2008 22:58:00-0700

Firstly, to comment on the ... comments. Brett suggested I get the wrist fixed immediately because on the whole the longer you let injuries go, the more chronic (and severe and harder to fix) they become. I agree completely as this is definitely the correct way to deal with your body. Your health is too important to neglect in any way. In fact, that was exactly the thought I had in mind when I had this approximately accurate (I can't remember the exact details but this is pretty close) conversation with the orthopedic surgeon who examined my MRI:

Him: So you've got a ganglion cyst.

Me: This is the best injury outcome given it could have been a small fracture or a torn ligament or tendon. Cysts are easier and cheaper to treat ...

Him: exaclty. (explains surgery)

Me: Sounds fine, how much?

Him: (Consults assistant: about 6 grand with insurance)

Me: Ok, here's the deal, (I always say that) what if I can't afford the surgery now, how long before it gets worse?

Him: That's actually another benefit of these ganglion cysts. They're not dangerous at all, they usually just cause a nagging pain. What's more is that they really don't end up getting worse and sometimes they end up clearing up. (like popping? wtf?)

Me: (surprised) So wait, to get things straight. I could wait like 5 years?

Him: Yes, it would fine.

Me: 10 years?

Him: Sure. Some people just opt out of the surgery and just deal with the pain as it usually doesn't affect their lives at all. You're a bit different because you will be doing push ups on it.

Me: Will me doing these added activities that stress the joint make it get worse? I'm not really a very normal person in terms of work out habits.

Him: No, it may make it a bit more sore every so often but the pain should go away relatively soon. It shouldn't get worse.

So my verdict is: now that I know I'm not damaging it, I'll just try to wrap it to limit its motion and then try to work through whatever pain I have (pain exists only during pushups and hand stand push ups). I may not be able to do it, that's certainly possible, but I'll give it a try. If I can't work through it, I'll change my workouts to avoid pushups and replace the exercise with a different but similar one. Thanks for your input, Brett.

So I was actually able to solve that programming bug after 1 11 hour day and 1 13 hour day of work. This doesn't exactly mean it's clear sailing for the data generation portion of my paper but I do feel pretty happy solving this issue. Along the way, I taught myself some more useful tools in the language I'm using. The tools should really allow me to create models faster and also allow me to share them with the neuroscience community. I also revamped some more parameters in my experiment and got parameters from a different paper to function correctly in my program for the first time (I tried last November and couldn't do it). Overall I feel like I really understand the modeling language I'm using now very well and I could talk about (almost) all of it at a conference with confidence. Next stop: generating the actual data for publication and praying I don't hit another snag.

6 week mark tomorrow for ankle injury. It should be healed by now. I'm waiting until NEXT Sunday to play in a competitive match but I will test the ankle mid week with some touches on the ball. I hope to go to the RSC tomorrow and sign up for someone to show me how to do Olympic-style lifts correctly! I can't wait!

The Pain of Publishing

Tue, 27 May 2008 10:53:00-0700

Hey all! I've been delayed by work for the past few weeks. As you may know, I'm working on my first publication and it's a bit rocky to say the least. I've got the abstract, intro, and the materials and methods almost complete. I've been working on the discussion part also and that is definitely slow going. Now I don't have the results completed because I have an annoying bug in my program that I've really got to get fixed or this publication won't fly at all. It's a real pain to have discovered the bug so late in the publication stage so I'm slightly stressed (but nowhere near the levels of stress in my early graduate student career).

The bug motivated me to learn some more about my simulation language and it could really benefit me in the future if I use the new methods I've learned. I will be extremely happy if I can have this bug fixed by the end of this week and have my data generated.

Not too much has been going on. I worked until midnight 3 or 4 times last week and also worked at least 8 hours over the weekend. I really want this publication to get submitted ASAP. June 1st will be the 6 week mark when I should theoretically be able to play soccer without re-injuring the ankle. I will probably give it another week after that just to make sure. I had an MRI on my wrist and it turns out it IS a ganglion cyst. The bad news is it will cost $6,000 dollars with insurance ($13,000 without) to remove. Now knowing that it's not a messed up ligament, tendon, or bone fracture I now feel completely free to say "FUCK THAT" and to tape the hell outta the aforementioned wrist until I get a "real job" with real money.

I can't wait to get back into the weight room and onto the soccer field. This inactivity is driving me positively mad.

Summer begins!

Fri, 09 May 2008 10:05:00-0700

With the completion of my prelim (during finals week) summer has officially begun. I've got 2-3 weeks more of downtime for my ankle sprain so that's a bummer. This thing is taking freaking forever to heal. Monday I decided I should try and start doing crossfit (the lifting parts not the running parts) so I start first by doing the crossfit warmup (you do this every time before you do the workout of the day): 3 sets of: Samson stretch 10-15 situps 10-15 squats 10-15 pull-ups 10-15 push-ups

None of these are very challenging for me but when I got to the push -ups my left wrist (which I injured 3 years ago and has never been right since) couldn't handle them. So I figure, hell, while I'm injured I may as well just get this stupid wrist fixed/looked at. According to the doctor I probably have a ganglion cyst. This is actually good because I thought I fractured it and it healed incorrectly (=chronic pain for the rest of my life). Hopefully I'll know for sure next week. They remove it with a simple outpatient surgery and the pain will be gone! That'll be great because I haven't been able to put much pressure on it for 3 years! So I'm excited for that. Now if I had the cash, I'd get some work done on my teeth so my body would be totally upgraded by the time my ankle healed but ... alas, that's not the case.

I'm working on my first paper. It's pretty cool. I'm nervous that biologists will make fun of me when they read it but ... hey, it's not like I've never had my ego crushed in grad school before. Rollins had it right when he used the phrase "such puny fists" to describe criticisms and challenges in life.

I uploaded some new tracks to http://mandelcat.muxtape.com. Spoon is up there. I love Spoon. They remind me of Wilco (so you may dig, Scott) but I like them a bit better. I'm a bit annoyed at the amount of "Indy crap" they have up there. I realize part of the reason of having something like this is to promote smaller unknown bands and such but do they all have to have that same "thrift-store-gestapo-go-analog-baby-we're-just-so-clever-meta-retro" feel to them?

Prelim Complete!

Fri, 02 May 2008 22:30:00-0700

This past Tuesday I did my prelim! I passed! Finally! I had 4 physicists and 1 biologist on my committee. My presentation/inquisition went fine. I made a few small errors but overall it was ok. After that I wanted to relax but I had a accuracy check due on Thursday so I had to work on that. Anyways, summer has officially started for me! My next project is publishing my first paper. That will be no small feat as I have some errors in my model I'm not sure I can correct. I think I'll have something to publish regardless.

So in the grand scheme of things here's the list of things I have to do: Write 3-4 papers, attend a conference (networking), become really fucking smart, write my dissertation, defend my dissertation, graduate! By "become really fucking smart" I mean that I've really gotta become an expert in the entire field of computational neuroscience. I know it already sounds like a pretty narrow field (and it is) but there's a lot of depth to it. There's a lot of basic biology and chemistry I have yet to learn. I need biochemistry and cell biology too. There are some other random subjects I need to know. Modern Control Engineering is something I need to know at the intermediate level (Dana, you do this right? Textbook recommendations?) Information Theory, Bayesian Statistics, Organic Chemistry, and non-linear differential equations need to be covered too. There are about 4 textbooks specific to computational neuroscience I need to master also. So yeah. I've got some work to do.

Justin, Beth, Scott, came back to West Lafayette (2 weeks ago?). It was a good time. We hung out at Kristin's and watched "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" as Justin mentioned. You'll have "axx" Justin about his favorite character. And for the record: Ancient (read: manly) civilizations chose their best warriors on the sole basis of the amount of ear hair they were able to grow. Most prized was the blondish-orange ear hair of their elite warriors. I mean, I'm just saying. Other than that we just hung out and caught up.

I found a really cool music site that I'm almost sure will be taken down by the RIAA. They're not doing anything illegal: they're streaming mp3's you put up on their site. The concept is this: you can easily create a mix-tape on the internet that everyone can listen to. It's easy and it's free. It's a great way to find new music. The URL http://muxtape.com. My mixtape is http://mandelcat.muxtape.com/. I'll change the songs whenever I get bored. Give it a listen if you're bored. Throw up a page of your own, it's fun!

Summer has begun but I've still got that damned high-ankle sprain that promises to side line me for another 3 weeks minimum. I'm dying here people. I watched a match today and put my indoor soccer shoes on and began pacing around the apartment. This is killing me. I've also (temporarily) got the cash to begin crossfit (I'm paying a trainer to show me how to do the lifts with the right form) but I'm afraid an old wrist injury will prevent me from doing some of the exercises. Hrm, we'll see.