Destination

Our hearts aligned we look ahead, knowing what we seek,
and so our steps have purpose now, we walk most happily.
What blessing to the wanderer a destination is,
What blessing to the man who roams a place that will be his.

I started a new blog on optics and physics today as well.

Moving

The nice thing about moving a blog is that you don't have to do any heavy lifting. All you have to do is type a bit.

Anyway, I've been experimenting with WordPress a bit because of a couple of key features that aren't here, namely tagging and math typesetting. I'll be doing most of my blogging from over there now.

Doug

Learning and caring and being rich

The study: People were presented with different sets of images in a sort of memory game. If I read it right, some images were associated with a picture of a coin and others were associated with a scrambled picture of a coin. The learners were told that they would actually receive a coin for every one they saw during learning.

Learning speed was negatively correlated with wealth, whether that was net wealth or income size. Basically, richer people had more trouble connecting the coin with its associated image than poorer people.

The conclusion of the authors wasn't that the rich people were less intelligent but rather that they cared less about the coins--they already had plenty.

While the intent of the study was to show diminishing returns of money as wealth increases, the thing that interests me the most is the assumption behind the study: that learning happens more quickly when you care more.

Round Two: accepting the challenge

Last year around the beginning of March began a neat time in my life, one of the times when I was really excited about something. That time opened up doors for me, teaching me a bit of Java and some Python and that I can do a lot on an hour a day.

That period ended about June 1st even though I didn't realize it had ended until a few months later and didn't fully recognize it until perhaps last December. I am really glad I took the challenge that I did take. I learned a lot and I think I could do a much better job the second time around on the same project.

Today I read a comment on a Paul Graham essay that rang out as a challenge. Here it is:

I worked for startups all through my 20s, but now at 37, I, I find myself up against point #9.

9. Family to support

I'd love to found a startup, but having a wife, two wonderful kids, and a $500K mortgage give you a very different perspective on the startup lifestyle.

I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and they are encouraged (forced?) to maintain a reasonable life/work balance, (The latter is probably the hardest to achieve; a startup requires an almost monomaniacal focus).

Well, I'm going to be 30 in less than a week. I have 5 children and a mortgage and I'm planning to complete a PhD. I want to publish my intention here to

1. continue to take great care of my family,
2. continue to progress on my degree and
   
3. start a company that I can be proud of.
   

I'm tired of people telling me that I can't.

I take this comment and others like it as a challenge and, having conferred with my wife and having prayed, I accept the challenge.

So here begins round two. I made a few mistakes in round one. Perhaps I can avoid them this time through.

1. My startup was a cool idea rather than something that I care about enough to sacrifice for.
2. I delegated my commitment to others. What I mean is that as I progressed I ran into things I didn't want to do. Rather than stay committed to making sure those things would happen I found others and hoped they would make the things happen. The delegation wasn't the problem so much as the relaxation of the commitment to make sure that they actually happened.
3. There came a time when I started focusing on tools instead of on producing results. Tools are important. But if you are going to do anything results have to be paramount.
4. I didn't talk to my target audience. I produced a product that I intended to sell to a certain group without ever actually talking to that group.

I've considered a lot of options. I can quit graduate school and start working. That doesn't feel right at this point. I can stay at graduate school and focus on it alone. Actually, for some reason I can't. I just can't seem to trust myself that graduate school right now is an adequate use of my time and my talents. Or I can go for it.

So I'm going for it. Wish us luck.

Inkscape

Physicists end up doing a lot of writing and presenting. It is fairly well accepted that something written by a considerate physicist should not only have text but should also have lots of nice diagrams and equations. Some would argue that a physicist making a presentation should have just about no text. The more theoretical ones would then ask for nothing but equations, charts, and diagrams. The more practical ones would maybe allow one or two equations but then ask that all of the rest of the talk be made up of charts, pictures and diagrams.

I've been using tools like OpenOffice, Windows Office, and LaTeX to make my diagrams. But I see these beautiful diagrams all the time in presentations and publications that tell me I've got to find something better. So I've asked around a bit and looked around a bit and no one has been able to give me an inexpensive answer: the guys who make the nice diagrams are all using Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw.

Well, I think I've finally found an open source answer to Adobe and Corel. Inkscape is one of the cooler programs to hit the planet. It is vector based and powerful. It is layered and has all kinds of operations and transformations that can be performed on different visual objects or groups of objects.

Simple interfaces are all the rage right now with every person wanting to be like Google. I like simplicity. But I have to say that Inkscape is more fun than simplicity. When you begin using it you will probably have to stare at it awhile before you can do anything cool. You will wonder why there are only four types of shapes to draw, squares, stars, and circles, and spirals. Open up a couple of the tutorials under the help button, though, and I think you may begin to fall in love. Transforming the star object alone may keep you entertained for 10s of minutes. Incscape is fairly intuitive and in some ways it is simple. But a better discription is that it is rich and deep. There are a lot of tricks to learn in there.

And then, after you feel that you are starting to get familiar with things, press Ctrl+Shift+X and boom! You have opened up the hood and have direct access to the XML format of your document in editable form.

Anyway, it's free, powerful, and fun. Check it out.

Doug

Herbie, blankies, and things

When I was 3-4 I had a favorite blanket. I sucked on it and some of the corners were pretty tattered. My mom repaired the edges and it never was the same after that.

Our kids still miss Sarah, our old '93 Ford Aerostar. They are fond of Sparky and Jonathan as well. But just like people can't replace each other perfectly neither can Sparky perfectly replace Sarah.

A lot of men find certain pairs of shoes or certain shirts that they just like. Even as they wear out they just want to stick with them.

I know that things are not people and won't ever be. But for some reason I think people are happier when they have a certain affection for certain things. What do you think?