Engineer Phillip

Is the internet changing the way we think?

2008-12-14T23:02:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, my mom pointed me to an article that, ever since I read it, has been on my mind. Entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", the article asks some probing questions about how the internet is changing how we think, and has led me to examine some of my computer practices. The author, Nicholas Carr, starts by noting that in this internet-centric age, he's noticed that his reading patterns have changed:

"Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

He then notes that many of his friends have noticed a similar pattern in their lives. One, for example, was a lit major in college, and so read tons of books, but has since stopped reading them altogether. In asking himself what could have caused this change, he provides a possible answer: "What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?"

There seems to be some evidence that, at the very least, people's reading habits, if not their thinking habits, have changed with the advent of the internet. For example, in a study of online research habits, the researchers conducting the study came to the following conclusion:

"It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense."

I've seen this in my own life - if I want a quick answer to a question, what faster place to turn than to my computer? With a quick internet search, I can probably come up with an answer more quickly than I could in any other way. However, if this ease of search comes at the expense of the ability to ponder and think deep thoughts, that's somewhat worrisome.

Unfortunately, there may be evidence that this is, indeed, the case. Let's look at Google, whom Carr talks about quite a bit in his article (thus the title). Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded the company around the search technology that they developed at Stanford, and they have grand visions for this technology. For example, Page once said in a speech that "The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people - or smarter. For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence." Brin once said in an interview, "Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off."

Is the assumption that we'd be better off if we had an artificial brain that was smarter than us really true, though? I'm not sure I think so, and neither does Carr. As he says:

"[That assumption] suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive."

So here we have a company who seems to be actively working to reduce opportunities for contemplation and meditation, as they see those opportunities as being caused by bugs in a piece of software.

Here's the clincher, though - it's actually in Google's financial interest to keep us from pondering as we surf. As Carr notes:

"The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction."

If all of that isn't enough food for thought, in Elder's quorum today, we had a lesson from the teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith about gaining knowledge of eternal truths. Here are some of his teachings that relate directly to the subject of this post:

“Knowledge is necessary to life and godliness... Knowledge is revelation. Hear, all ye brethren, this grand key: knowledge is the power of God unto salvation.”

“Knowledge does away with darkness, suspense and doubt; for these cannot exist where knowledge is. … In knowledge there is power. God has more power than all other beings, because He has greater knowledge; and hence He knows how to subject all other beings to Him. He has power over all.”

“… A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge, for if he does not get knowledge, he will be brought into captivity by some evil power in the other world, as evil spirits will have more knowledge, and consequently more power than many men who are on the earth. Hence it needs revelation to assist us, and give us knowledge of the things of God.”

“The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God. How much more dignified and noble are the thoughts of God, than the vain imaginations of the human heart!"

Thus, we must gain knowledge if we want to receive salvation. However, we can't expect to receive that knowledge without work and sacrifice on our part. What is required? Well, at least one requirement is that we ponder and think on the things of God, something that becomes increasingly difficult to do if we lose the ability or motivation to meditate.

What do you all think about this? You should really go and read Carr's article (and the lesson from the Joseph Smith manual, if you haven't already) for yourselves, as it contains lots of good stuff that I didn't include in this post. Let me know if you're able to finish the article without getting distracted by something else. :)

Have you ever tried actively listening to music?

2008-09-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

Anybody who knows me will know that I love electronics devices, especially computers. They will probably also know that I'm someone who has to have good sound when listening to music or watching a movie. Thus, whenever I get a chance to listen to new sound equipment, I jump at the chance.

Such was the case about 3 weeks ago. The occasion was our ward's annual dinner and auction, which consists of members of the ward donating stuff that then gets bid on by the rest of the ward (and there is a wide range of items, from baby-sitting & car-washing, to multiple nights' stays in cabins in Yosemite or on the beach). The proceeds of the auction end up going towards girls camp and boy scout camp the following summer.

Anyhow, at this year's auction, I arrived to find a nice stereo system (consisting of a nice Yamaha natural sound stereo receiver and 2 speakers) sitting on the table, waiting to be auctioned off. I ended up walking away with it for a measly $5, and brought it home, excited to compare it to the (large) shelf system we got shortly after getting married.

And now I get to the point of this post: how often do you actively listen to music? When I say actively, I mean this: how often do you sit down to listen to music while your mind is engaged with what you're listening to, and you're not doing anything else? As I was doing some comparisons between the two sound systems, I was actively listening to the quality and balance of the sound, and was surprised to hear Dido's voice come popping out at me as she was singing. It was kind of a cool moment, and it led me to reflect on the fact that I don't very often listen actively to music. More often than not, I use it as background noise while I'm engaged doing something else (like doing dishes, playing with Joy, riding the train home, etc). However, I think that much of the beauty of the music is lost on us when we're not actively paying attention to what we're listening to.

I want to take more time to listen actively to music, and, in this way, get to know it better. The same principle applies to many things, including spiritual - when I'm engaged and actively studying the scriptures, I learn more and gain more insights than I otherwise would. When I'm fully engaged in my studies at school, I accomplish more in a shorter period of time than I otherwise would. In a world where people increasingly feel the need to always be connected to the internet or to friends, I think it's increasingly important that I take more time away from my computer to do active, enriching things like playing with my daughter, studying the scriptures, and listening to good music.

Name that disease.

2008-09-10T03:03:00.001-07:00

Let's play a game of "Name that Disease". Here are the symptoms:

extreme sore throat (often with white patches on the tonsils & back of the throat)
intermittent fever (can range anywhere from mild to severe)
sore and/or weak muscles
swollen/tender lymph nodes (especially in the neck)

These are the symptoms I was experiencing 3 weeks ago when I went to the Student Health Center to get a diagnosis. If you guessed "strep throat," you guessed what I thought I had, considering that strep was the disease that I seemed to perpetually have growing up, and most of the symptoms match. However, there was something different about this sickness - I didn't have a constant high fever that I almost always get when I have strep, which was quite odd.

There was also one other symptom:

fatigue & low levels of energy.

If you guessed infectious mononucleosis, you'd have hit the nail on the head. When I mentioned these symptoms to the physician's assistant that I saw, his comment was, "Well, those sound like all of the classical symptoms of mono, but it could also be strep throat. Let's get a throat culture done (to check for strep), and then send you to get blood drawn to check for mono." Twenty minutes later, I was back in his office with a positive diagnosis of mono. He told me to rest and forbade me from doing any strenuous physical activities, and recommended that I schedule an appointment to see him a week later (though he also said that most of the USC students who he's recently seen with mono are feeling completely better within a week of seeing him, so cancel the appointment).

That diagnosis explained lots of things. Kimberly did a good job of blogging about our family reunion to the East Coast (see posts 1, 2, 3, & 4), but what she didn't mention was that on the last day of the reunion, when everyone went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I stayed at the hotel because I was feeling kind of gross and somewhat tired. As it turned out, that was the beginning of the 15-day period that I experienced the symptoms, especially the fatigue, of mono. For the following week, especially once we were home, I was surprised to be having to take mid-day naps every couple of days. One morning when I got up with Joy, I was really surprised that after playing with her for twenty minutes, I was completely exhausted. Then, the following week, the sore throat and minor intermittent fever started, which led me to see the doctor, but by the end of the following week, all of the symptoms were completely gone, which I am really grateful for, since school has since gotten busy.

Here are some interesting facts about mono (taken from wikipedia):

It's a viral infection, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) (which is a member of the herpes family). Since it's a viral infection, doctors can't prescribe any kind of medicine to cure someone with mono, but rather have to let them let their bodies heal on their own.
EBV has some interesting attributes that makes eradicating the disease almost impossible. First, it's transmitted by saliva, which is how mono has become known as the "kissing disease." However, just as often it can be passed when someone sneezes into their hand and then shakes someone else's hand (or when family members drink out of the same cup, etc.). Second, it has a 4-6 week incubation period, which means that a long time passes between when an individual gets infected and when symptoms begin to show. Third, and the clincher, the infection can be asymptomatic, which means that the patient shows no symptoms, meaning that some people might be sick with mono for many years and never know it.
Because of the factors above, it stands to reason that many people may actually carry the virus without knowing it. In fact, researchers believe that up to 95% of adults in the United States between the ages of 35 & 40 are carriers of the Epstein-Barr virus.
Finally, if a person becomes infected with mono and shows symptoms, those symptoms can persist for anywhere between 1 & 2 months (that's the average).

Lucky for me (or more probably because of blessings from above), my symptoms lasted only about 15 days, rather than the average 1-2 months.

Thank goodness that's over.

The issues with laptop ergonomics

2008-09-10T01:15:00.001-07:00

During the Spring and Summer semesters this year, I took a couple of computer science courses that required many hours of programming. As I worked on those programming assignments both at school and at home, and as I didn't have constant access to the internet, I decided that it would be best to do all of my programming on my laptop, which I could carry with me wherever I go.

However, all of those hours on my laptop taught me an important, if not painful, lesson - a laptop by itself is ergonomically terrible for its user. Because the screen cannot be physically separated from the keyboard, it presents an interesting problem for him: if he tries to position the laptop low enough to make his wrists and arms comfortable, the screen will be so low that he has to bend his neck to see it, which can cause muscle fatigue and chiropractic problems after long periods of time. On the other hand, if he elevates the laptop to bring the screen to eye level (and thus relax his neck), he will be placing his wrists in an unnatural position, which can cause bad problems like carpal tunnel syndrome.

My painful lesson has come from the former scenario - as I've worked on my laptop on places from my apartment futon to the light rail between school and home, I've strained my neck so much that I've hurt the muscles and tweaked the bones in my spinal column. The problem has become so bad that I've had to start seeing a chiropractor every so often to straighten out my bones.

(image courtesy of www.laptop-ergonomics.com)

However, seeing a chiropractor doesn't really address the root of the problem, which is caused by bad laptop ergonomics. So, a few days ago, I decided to do something about the problem. As I explained, the basic issue is that you can't separate the laptop's screen from the keyboard. The above diagram outlines the problem, as well as a potential solution. On the left, you have a user who is straining both his wrists and neck trying to use the laptop by itself. On the right, however, he has gotten a laptop stand that changes the angle of the keyboard while simultaneously elevating the screen, and this helps him to relax both his neck and his wrists.

The key is in separating the screen from the keyboard, which I did by purchasing a laptop stand (to elevate the screen) and then plugging in an external keyboard and mouse. By opening up the laptop as much as the picture shows, I can raise the screen to my eye level, which drastically reduces the strain on my neck.

Then, while I was at it, I decided to get myself a better desk chair, one that gives me lumbar support (ie, support for my lower back), adjustable support for my neck, and a place to rest my elbows. It's very comfortable to relax in, as well. :)

Here's the full setup. As you can see, the laptop screen is level with the top of the chair, which puts it at eye level, and the external keyboard is low enough, and at the right angle to allow me to type comfortably. For the week that I've been working this way, I've been feeling better (I just need to break my habit of leaning forward and peering at the screen when I see something interesting...not good for the neck...). Let's see how I do in the next few months.

(Apparently, I'm not the only one with physical problems because of using a laptop too much. I guess it's become so much of a problem with students at Cornell that the health services group there has put together a website with lots of useful information and tips about laptop ergonomics.)

when your graphics card blows up...

2008-07-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

After 2 1/2 years of almost daily use, our desktop computer stopped working. Kimberly posted a snippet about this earlier (see here), but I wanted to give more details about the problem, for those of you who care about this type of stuff.

A couple of weekends ago, when we had the first major heat wave of the summer, we lost power in our apartment for at least an hour. A couple of days later, Kimberly turned around and told me, "The computer has frozen." I rebooted, and shortly after that, I was presented with the following screen:

Another reboot, and this happened:

Well, obviously something was really wrong. Having diagnosed a faulty graphics with my father-in-law's laptop about 6 months ago, and recognizing that I was seeing some of the same symptoms, I ran some hardware tests, especially on the graphics card. The picture below shows one of the tests running.

Notice the pinkish horizontal line toward the bottom of the screen? That's not supposed to be there, and points to a bad graphics card.

Unfortunately, the graphics card on the computer is integrated, with no expansion options, meaning that if I wanted to replace just the card, I was going to have to purchase at least a replacement motherboard, and either pay someone to install it for me, or install it myself (which, though I could do, I didn't want to).

Instead of taking the motherboard replacement option, we opted instead to just replace the computer, since a lot of innovation has occurred with computer hardware in the last 2 years (and since I didn't have to worry about losing our data, having backed it up only a few days before the crash). Dell's outlet store has some nice computers for very inexpensive prices, and we ended up getting one for less than $500. It has the following specs:

2.4 GHz Intel core 2 duo processor
2 GB RAM (@ 800 MHz)
256 MB ATI Radeon HD 2400 pro
250 GB SATA HD (@ 7200 rpm)
7.1 sound card

After not being able to replace our faulty graphics card, I decided that I'd never purchase another computer with integrated graphics, just in case I do have to replace it. I also decided to purchase a backup power supply for the computer and monitor, since power outages are probably what caused the problems with the old computer. The backup power supply will keep the computer running for about 15 minutes in the event of an outage, and has the capability of automatically shutting the computer down if it's battery is low.

The backup power supply has already come in handy - I was recently running the air conditioning, dishwasher, and vacuum simultaneously, and tripped a circuit breaker. Everything turned off but the computer. Maybe we'll keep it running in good condition for longer than a couple of years this time around.

President Hinckley's impact on me

2008-02-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

Ever since President Gordon B. Hinckley's death last week (he died in his home, surrounded by family, last Sunday evening at about 7pm MST), I've had a chance to reflect on the impact that this inspired man has had on me*. He was the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and, while not the only prophet that I've been alive to see and hear, he has had the greatest impact on me. There are many things that I could say about him, including talking about his always positive attitude, his fun sense of humor, his starting of the Perpetual Education Fund, and his ambitious vision for the building of temples, which have been a great blessing to both me and Kimberly. However, I'd like to talk about two things that have had a great impact on me, and one which I wish to model in my own life:

I said that President Hinckley is not the only prophet that I've known. In fact, President Ezra Taft Benson was the prophet when I was born, and I would see him sitting on the stand during the general conference broadcasts that we always attended as a family. He had been sick for a long time, though, so I don't ever remember hearing him speak. Following his passing, Howard W. Hunter, who was the first bishop of the ward we're now attending, became president of the church. I remember seeing him stand at the pulpit at general conference, but no one talk really stands out to me. Then, following his death, President Hinckley became the prophet, and I remember, vividly, sitting in a session of general conference at which I heard him speak and feeling, in a very strong way, the great love he had for all of the members of the church, including me. It was then that I had the Holy Ghost confirm to me that he was a prophet of God, and ever since that time, I've striven to follow his inspired counsel. Someone said at his funeral service that he has been the prophet for the youth of the church (ie, the only one that they've known), and while that's not strictly true for me, I relate closely to that statement. I love him and will miss him.
In the October 2004 General Conference, where he gave a very clear, very forceful talk on the evils of pornography (see text here), he also gave a talk entitled "The Women in our Lives" (here's the text), which had a very strong impact on me. In it, he reminded us that woman was the final and culminating creation of God, after everything that had been created before, and spoke out strongly against anyone who would denigrate or abuse a woman. He spoke of the need for husbands to honor and respect their wives, and of the need for both members in a marriage to do all they could for the well-being and comfort of their spouse. He then told of a time, in their old age, when Marjory, his late wife, had whispered to him, "You have always given me wing to fly, and I have loved you for it." That talk became, for me, the model upon which to build my marriage, whenever that time came, and I hope that, once Kimberly and I have lived to a ripe old age together, I will have treated her in such a way that she can say the same thing to me.

And now, finally, the thing that I wish to model from President Hinckley: his work ethic. He, up to the final hours of his life, was always on the go, always working for the blessing of the members of the church. I've heard people marvel at how much energy he had and at how much he was able to accomplish in his life. When asked about this at one point, he referred to an experience he had had on his mission. The work was difficult and he had become discouraged, something he mentioned in a letter to his father. The reply came back: "Forget yourself and go to work." Soon after that, he went into his room, knelt in prayer, and dedicated himself to the service of the Lord. Many years later, he said that every good thing that has happened to him in his life, he can trace back to that commitment that he made to the Lord.

I hope that I can learn to work with the strength and vigor that President Hinckley did. There are many things out there to distract us - tv, the internet and video games are three major sources of distraction for me (or at least they could be - Kimberly and I don't own a tv because we both know that we'd watch it all day if we did have one). But there are so many things that are more important than these: personal growth and righteousness, family relationships, education, and service in the church all come to mind. I hope to minimize the distractions that would sap my energy (and which currently command too much of my time) and focus instead on these much more important and lasting things.

In closing, goodbye, dear President Hinckley. I'm a little sad to see you go, but at the same time, I know that you've had a wonderful reunion with your sweet wife on the other side of the veil, and for that, I'm happy. Thanks for your love and for the great impact that you've had on my life.

*(Thanks to my Elder's Quorum president, who asked me to think about this subject so that I could contribute to today's lesson.)

Interesting facts about Lithium Ion batteries

2008-01-30T00:42:00.000-08:00

When my new cellphone came in the mail a week or so ago, I was surprised to open up the box it shipped in and find retailer instructions to charge the phone for 24 hours. The documentation from the manufacturer, however, said nothing about how long to let the phone charge for the first time, so I went to the internet to see what I could find about lithium ion batteries, and came up with the following (credit to Wikipedia):

Lithium ion batteries do not suffer from the so-called "memory" effect, where the level of initial charge affects it's capacity from then on. In other words, you don't have to fully charge and discharge it multiple times when you first get a new device. Just charge it until it's fully charged, and be on your way.
"Li-ion batteries should be bought only when needed, because the aging process begins as soon as the battery is manufactured" (Wikipedia). This is something that I didn't know about lithium ion batteries - make sure that when you get a new battery, check its manufacturing date to make sure it was produced at least fairly recently.
The storage capacity of a lithium ion battery is a function, not only of its age, but also of its current temperature and charge level. The above-cited Wikipedia article has a table illustrating this: if you keep the battery at 40% charge at 32-deg. F for a year, it will lose ~2% of its capacity. Conversely, if you keep it at 100% charge at 140-deg. F, it will lose ~40% of its capacity in the same amount of time. That means that you don't want to keep a fully-charged battery at high temperatures for a long time.

That last point above explains, at least in part, why my laptop battery barely holds charge any more (after only a year): I often plug my laptop in while using it, but that means that the hot electronics in the case are heating up the battery, which quickly reaches a full charge. That's a bad combination. What's the lesson to be learned? If you own a laptop and like to keep it plugged in all of the time, remove the battery from the laptop once it's charged! You'll greatly prolong the life of your battery in this way, thus keeping yourself from being forced to pay big bucks for a replacement earlier than you need it.

Steve Jobs: "The Kindle doesn't stand a chance!"

2008-01-21T15:34:00.001-08:00

Have you seen, heard or read anything about the Amazon Kindle? It's a new e-book reader, an electronic device that connects to the internet and allows users to download books and other print media in electronic form. It's being produced and sold by Amazon.com in conjunction with their e-book store - you can browse the store and purchase electronic copies of books.

The idea is cool - then people who commute to work and school every day, for example, don't have to take a single book with them to read, but can just take this device, which has a collection of their favorite books, and decide what they want to read.

Ever since the Kindle's recent release, I've read about many people asking how successful or not it will be. Mostly their opinions about the answer to that question revolve around the device's design, size, ease of use, and, of course, the cost of the e-books on Amazon's website.

Steve Jobs, however, apparently thinks that it will fail miserably for a completely different reason. It's not that the Kindle is poorly designed, nor is it that e-books are too expensive, but rather, the simple fact that Americans don't read anymore. According to him, 40% of Americans read less than 1 book per year, so if we don't read, why are we going to spends hundreds of dollars for an e-book reader? (He said this in an interview that I read about on Cnet.com.)

That's a scary statistic. It reminds me of frequent times in my mission (I served in Mexico) when we'd invite a family to read chapters from the Book of Mormon, and return to find that they hadn't done so. I figured it was partially because a large portion of the Mexican people, especially in the regions where I served, had not made a habit of frequent reading, so they didn't feel compelled to read the Book of Mormon. I didn't realize that even citizens of the US have this same problem.

I don't read as much now as I used to. I want to read at least 4-5 novels this year, though, since reading is such a good thing.

Macworld 2008 - movie rentals & a new notebook

2008-01-15T11:40:00.001-08:00

The Macworld 2008 conference is going on in San Francisco right now, and at the keynote address this morning, Steve Jobs made four announcements, two of which I want to mention here:

Apple is introducing a new laptop, called the MacBook Air. It's a 3-lb laptop that's 3/4" at its thickest. That's a really thin notebook. It comes with an 80-GB hard drive, 2 GB of RAM, a full-size keyboard, and a 13.3" display. That's a cool-looking notebook, but at $1799, it's not cheap, either.
This is what I'm excited about: we can now rent movie through iTunes (or we will be able to starting in February). How it will work: you rent the movie for $3.99 if it's a new release, $2.99 otherwise, and have to watch the movie within 30 days. Once you've started the movie, you have finish it within 24 hours. What about waiting for the movie to download? As soon as you rent it, it starts downloading and you can immediately start watching it (it will continue downloading in the background).

While I'm not going to go out and buy the new notebook, I'm excited about being able to rent movies through iTunes. I shouldn't have to make a trip to Blockbuster again (at least, if all the movies I want to rent are available via iTunes).

(for a summary of the rest of the keynote address, see here.)

Dealing without a cell phone

2008-01-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

Kimberly and I upgraded our cell phones this last week, and in the process of doing so, changed our service from Sprint to AT&T (there are several reasons for that, two of which being that phones on the AT&T network store their data on SIM cards, which can be transferred between phones. The second is that, believing that wireless carriers charge us too much for our service plans, I don't want to show too much loyalty to any one carrier by staying with them).

Because I purchased the phones and plan online, Best Buy (where I bought the phones) is shipping them to me. I talked to them on the phone, and they assured me that our current phones would keep working until the new phones arrived and we activated them (they are going to transfer our current phone numbers to the new phones). I got off the phone with them, and went down to school for the day, but you can imagine my surprise and annoyance when, toward the end of the day, I tried to call Kimberly, and got a message that my phone was not connected to any carrier in the area.

Turns out that somehow my new phone got activated before it was supposed to, so my Sprint phone got taken off the network. Boy. So for the last couple of days, whenever I've needed to go somewhere, I've taken Kimberly's phone, which still works as it should. Go figure.

This weekend is our Stake Conference, and at the adult session tonight, the wife of our mission president talked about the Book of Mormon. As part of her talk, she drew an analogy that, given my cell phone situation, hit home. She basically said, "What would happen if we treated our copies of the Book of Mormon like we do our cell phones? What if we took them with us everywhere we went, and turned around and went back home for them if we forgot them? What if we opened them up multiple times a day and spent several hours each day using them? What if we received multiple communications via the text every day?"

She then told us that the Book of Mormon is better than a cell phone because no contract is required, there is no time that service or reception is lost, and that our bill has already been paid (Christ did that).

Tomorrow, instead of having the tradition general session of Stake Conference, we're going to have a broadcast session from Salt Lake with President Hinckley and other general authorities. I'm looking forward to that.

How the iPhone is changing the wireless industry

2008-01-11T08:22:00.000-08:00

There is a story on the Wired Magazine's website (here's the link) telling the tale of how Steve Jobs and Apple are changing the wireless industry in the US with the iPhone. If you have experience using cell phones, you might be aware of the fact that, for a long time, wireless carriers have basically mandated to cell phone manufacturers what kinds of phones they can and can't build, including limiting features that the phones might otherwise have if they were being used on a different network. The philosophy of the carriers is "Give them a steep discount on a cheap phone + make them sign a 2-year contract = lots of $ for us." End the end, carriers haven't historically thought that giving users the choice with their cell phones would be a lucrative deal for them, so they haven't done it.

Until now. Steve Jobs had a series of top-secret meetings with executives at Cingular (now AT&T) in which he basically told them, "Apple can design a phone/PDA/mp3 player that's light-years ahead of anything on the market, and lots of people will buy it, which will give you lots of business." His stipulation? That Cingular not touch them when it came to designing the phone.

It took those executives a long time to finally sign an agreement with Jobs, but they did, and because they did, the iPhone is changing the way the industry works. Other carriers have scrambled to get phones similar to the iPhone (ie, placing lots of emphasis on style and usability) because they've lost business to people making the switch, but it was the iPhone that started it all.

I think that this is a great thing, and I applaud Steve Jobs and Apple for doing what they did. They're revolutionizing the wireless industry in the same way that they revolutionized the digital music industry.

Head on over to the Wired website and read the story yourself. In it, too, is a nice picture of what an engineers life can be like when he has a deadline to meet!

week for cooking

2008-01-10T23:20:00.000-08:00

With the new year, in addition to setting goals for the new year, Kimberly and I decided to try an experiment, which is going on this week. We decided to switch our dinner-cooking and dish-washing jobs for the week, which means that I'm planning, shopping for, and cooking dinner each night for 7 consecutive nights (Tuesday through next Monday), while she washes dishes.

The experience has been interesting so far - I've done all the planning of meals, gone grocery shopping (I wanted to see how little I could spend, and it turns out that I spent a full 1/3 of the trip's expenses on baby food!), and made 3 meals, including pancakes (with eggs and fruit), homemade pizza (and salad) and Hamburger Helper (with corn and salad). Those meals probably won't surprise anybody that reads this post, especially considering my attitude toward cooking. Unlike Kimberly, who likes cooking, and loves experimenting with new recipes, I'm someone who is proficient at cooking, but only really do it if I need to. I don't like doing lots of fancy stuff, nor do I like spending lots of time in the kitchen - I just want to make sure that the meal is at least decently balanced and nutritious.

Having said all of that, this experience is reminding me and how much time it takes to put together good meals each night. It increases my appreciation for Kimberly, who does it all, in addition to having a small daughter to watch all day while Daddy is working as school. Thanks, sweetheart!

Our new dining room table

2007-10-30T18:11:00.001-07:00

Several months ago, about three families moved out of our apartment complex within only a few weeks of each other. Shortly after they had left, I arrived home from school to find Kimberly telling me that she wanted me to come look at something. She took me out to the rear of the complex where we found that one of the families – we don’t know which – had left a dining room table behind. It was nice table – solid wood, very solidly constructed, and expandable with a leaf (that had also been left behind). We also found that in places the finish was flaking off, and that there were a couple of places that had minor dings, but overall, the table was in pretty good condition. We don’t know why the previous owners of the table decided to leave it behind, but since Kimberly and I had been using a card table for our dining room table since being married, we jumped on the opportunity to replace it with something better. Thus it was that a new dining room table came into our family.

I’ve always thought it’d be cool to take some piece of furniture and either finish it or re-finish it, whichever it needed. I don’t know why – it may have to do with the fact that I helped my mom many years ago to refinish a nice dining room table that my parents had been given as a gift, and had fun with the project. It might also have to do with the fact that I find woodworking interesting, though I know almost nothing about it. In any case, I decided that I wanted to strip the old, flaking coat(s) of finish off the table, fill in the dents and dings, stain the table (which was originally very light in color), and apply a fresh coat of finish. Not knowing everything that I needed to do the job properly, I took the problem to a woodworking store that Dad Sorenson suggested that I visit, and they sent me home with a whole set of supplies from a liquid stripping solution to rags to apply the finish to the finish itself.

Having acquired the supplies I needed, I got to work on the project, which ended up turning into a long and tedious job. Why? Well, the stripping of the table and leaf went very quickly and smoothly, as did the initial process of sanding them down to make sure they were ready for stain and finish to be applied. After that, however, life got difficult. I don’t have experience applying stain, which needs to be applied very uniformly to look good. Thus, the first two or three times that I applied stain I didn’t get it right and had to sand the table down to try it again (it was actually a can of a stain/finish combo, which meant that I only had to apply a single product to get both on the table – sounds good, at least in theory). This process of repeatedly applying stain/finish and then removing it because I applied it non-uniformly took many, many hours, and towards the end of the process, most of our neighbors knew what we were doing.

Finally, I got tired of hand-sanding the table down after botching stain applications (and the table never started to look better, even though I was getting better at applying the stain, which was both puzzling and frustrating), so I called Ken Owens to ask if I could borrow his power sander. He was happy to lend it to me, and when I went to go pick it up, he gave me some advice that turned out to be a life-saver. When I told him that I was using the combination of stain and finish, he looked at me and said “That stuff’s TERRIBLE! You can't get it on uniformly.” He then proceeded to suggest that I get normal stain and normal finish, and apply them separately. I did that, and found out that I was able to both stain and finish the table twice as quickly as it had taken me before, and that the finished table looked about 10 times better. If only I had talked to Ken much sooner than I did.

While the table re-finishing project is still not complete (the leaf has been stained but needs finish to be applied, and I want to paint the legs black instead of white), the table is now at least useable, for which both I and Kimberly are very grateful. Thank you Ken Owens!

This is how the table looked once the old coat of finish was off.

You can see the scratches and dings here. I filled in the biggest dings.

This is the leaf with a coat of stain/finish combo. It may be hard to see in the picture, but it looked all blotchy and streaky - not what one wants in a nicely finished piece of furniture.

This is the final product - the table is not streaky at all like the leaf was, though some of the wood absorbed more stain than other parts did. I think that it adds personality to the table, but the point is that it looks so much better now than it did previously.

Personal interests revealed

2007-10-14T14:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I had several things become clearer to me about my personal interests than they've ever been. Kimberly and I, together with half of the young families in the South Pasadena Ward (my church congregation), had been invited to a progressive potluck dinner down the street from our apartment complex. While eating dessert, I got talking with Arthur Shek about his job, and found out that he's currently the manager of one of the animation groups for Disney (his group did lots of the animation for movies like Brother Bear and Treasure Planet). As he talked about what he and his group does, and talked about how much he loves what he's doing, I found myself thinking that his job (or the job of one of the people in his group) would be really cool. Think about it - they're writing computer code to implement highly complex mathematical algorithms that require, for the more complex animations, an 8,000-processor computer farm to crunch. What's not to love?

That evening launched a weekend full of thought and conversation with Kimberly as I tried to piece together what it is about Arthur's job that interests me so much. After all, many ward members have really interesting jobs: Sarah Flake recently got a job as a restaurant critic for a local newspaper, Andy Ning maintains all of the IBM mainframes that Toyota uses at one of its regional offices, and Brian Snow is studying to become an orthopedic surgeon. Besides these, we have many lawyers, several accountants, and a whole boat load of dental students in the ward. However, while thinking that these jobs are interesting, I've never thought that it'd be cool to have their jobs (but I'm sure that they do). What was it about Arthur's job that interests me so much?

By the end of the weekend, I had figured out. It all comes down to my personal interests which, in the past two or three days, had suddenly become very clear. They are the following:

I love programming. Studying biomedical engineering has given me a solid background in Matlab programming, which, while not a general purpose computer language, is still very useful for technical computing. While working as an intern at Siimpel Corp. during my senior year at USC, I had to learn Labview, which is similar in purpose to Matlab, but with a stronger emphasis on data acquisition in a lab environment - that was a lot of fun. Additionally, being diabetic, and knowing of the positive effects of keeping track of my blood glucose values, I decided to write a database program to facilitate that tracking process. (After all, why purchase such a program when you can write it yourself?) Kimberly will tell you that I've spent many hours working on that project. So I like programming.
The program has to be fast. It's not enough that it does what it's supposed to, but it has to do it fast. I realized this interest of mine after my electrophysiology lab on the same day as the progressive dinner that we went to. That day we had to design and complete some experiment that involved the post-processing of an ECG signal, and my group decided to write a program that would calculate the heart rate as a function of time. As the only group member with Matlab installed on my laptop, it fell to me to do the programming, and I was pretty tickled when I was able to write a 21-line program that did what we needed it to do, and did it fast. Who cares that we had just extracted very useful clinical data from a signal we had recorded the previous week, and who cares that we had learned something about basic signal processing. The thing that excited me so much was that I had written a short, fast and efficient program. Similarly, the project that I'm working on in Dr. Berger's lab has required that I write a program to visualize data recorded from a moving monkey. One of the requirements of the program is that we be able to animate the data in a movie-like fashion to allow us to see what happened during the course of the experiment. Within only a few weeks of starting that program, I had something that worked...but the animation was slower than I liked (when it comes to animation, the number of frames per second, or FPS, displayed is what gives it smoothness). What I originally had would have served its purpose fine, but being unhappy with its slowness, I worked on increasing the animation speed for the next several weeks until I was satisfied with it. These two examples help emphasize that, not only do I like to program, but I like the program to be fast and efficient.
It's got to look good. Kimberly will tell you that I love "pretty pictures." If I have to produce some plot for a project or assignment, I want it to look good, and I'm delighted when the final product does. There have been many times when Kimberly has been interrupted by my crying out in excitement about some really good-looking plot that I just produced. If you follow my blog, you will know that one of the reasons I really like Windows Vista is because of the cool eye candy that it delivers. I also want this data visualization tool that I'm developing for my lab to look good. If it looked boring, but did what it was supposed to, that'd be enough for the purpose of the project, but since I'm working on it, it had better look good. To bad I don't have more knowledge/experience with graphic design (like my cousin Philip Gossling).

These three personal interests are, I think, what excited me so much about Arthur Shek's job. A job like that requires programming (you'd have to have a degree in computer science to even qualify for the job), it definitely requires writing fast and efficient code, and the final product has to look good (have you had an experience seeing a poorly-animated movie? It's not something that you want to see again). Maybe someday I'll have a job that requires some, if not all, of those things. That would be the coolest job ever!

Again ?!?!

2007-09-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has read my blog will know that several months ago, I installed Linux on my laptop, and then took it off again after about 2-3 days. I did it for several reasons: first, some of the more major applications I was using had glitches I didn't like; two, the system itself had glitches that made frequent re-starts necessary; and three, it was requiring a lot of time that I wanted to instead be spending with my family.

Call me an incurable techie (or geek or tinkerer) if you'd like, but I installed Linux again about 4 days ago. I don't know what it is about computers and software, especially operating systems, that attracts me so much, but I just every so often feel compelled to try out some new piece of software. When it's Windows you're talking about, most new pieces of software are too expensive for a poor student who doesn't need them to buy. Maybe that's what motivated the change, I don't know.

What I do know, however, is that I've been running Linux for 4 days now, and I'm actually liking it. Today, for example, was the first real chance I had to start migrating data and calendar stuff over from Windows, but I started the process, and actually got some other useful things done, too! That bodes well.

What about the concerns that motivated me to take it off my hard drive last time?

-Operating system stability: I learned something very interesting this time around. There are hundreds, if not thousands of distribution of Linux available today (Just look at this site). What differentiates them all from one another? While they all share the same software kernel that's responsible for allocating memory and processor time to programs, they all differ in the applications and utilities that they include with their particular distribution. Some of them differ in how simple or complex they make their distribution, and some even differ in how they package their additional download-able software packages from the internet. What I found out when I tried to install Linux again is that different distributions also have different levels of stability, and that makes a huge difference when it comes down to the usability of the system.

When I installed Linux a few months ago, not knowing anything about it, I decided to try the most popular distribution, Ubuntu. It turns out, though, that even though it is the most popular, it is definitely not the most stable - maybe that's where marketing power asserts itself. I did some research on other distributions, tried a second one that didn't work, and finally ended up using OpenSuse 10. I've got to say that I'm impressed with OpenSuse, and have really enjoyed the experience with it so far. The installation was easy, and everything now just seems to work, and work well. I'm not expecting it to be completely glitch-free (since not much software is these days), but nothing too ugly has raised its head yet, so I'm hoping nothing will.

I guess the point here is that if you decide to try Linux, keep in mind that you may have to try several different distributions until you find one that you like, that meets your needs, and that is stable enough for you.

-Glitches in applications: I'm now using a different application set than I did last time around. I also know that the developers of these applications do a pretty good job of fixing them when they come up, so maybe the first time I installed Linux, I happened to get it at a buggy time for the software. Either way, the software has been useful and stable.

-Time constraints: If anything, I'm now more busy than I was in May, when I first tried Ubuntu. However, if I'm not having to figure out why my computer just crashed or why X program just randomly quit on me, that should free up my time considerably. If it doesn't, though, I will just have to slow my Linux-learning pace because there are other things that are more important than trying a new operating system.

Wish me luck as I start this journey. At minimum, I'm going to keep Linux on my computer for a week or two, and see how it goes. If it goes well, I'll keep it, and if not, then I don't have to. Either way, I'll keep you posted about how things go.

Oh, and I guess I should post about some stuff other than just really techie stuff. :)

The search continues

2007-08-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I ran across this Newsweek article talking about the ongoing search for bin Laden ever since the aftermath of 9/11. The article is somewhat sobering and a bit disheartening as it seems that those people that have been in charge of the search have gotten their priorities and motivations quite mixed up. Instead of moving to remove what was a real and dangerous threat (and what may be again becoming a threat), we've been more worried about not looking stupid or making a display of power that will impress and intimidate our enemies.

I don't have much more to say about it than that. More, I wanted people to see and read the article, and post their opinions about it.

How to choose a good blender

2007-07-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

When I got home from my mission, my mom introduced me to the exquisite taste that can be a home-made, all fruit smoothie. Since then, I've learned how to make those smoothies myself, and in the summer months, Kimberly and I enjoy them every once-in-a-while.

However, finding a blender that will handle all the frozen fruit and ice that you can give it is another question...many that you can purchase will only take a certain amount of what they consider beating before something breaks and you have to go out and purchase another one.

So...what's the ultimate test for the strength and durability of a blender? What else, but see if it will blend an iPhone (of course, what could be more natural)?

After the demo, the company that makes the blender is selling the iPhone, together with a blenders, on eBay. Crazy.

Vista is a good operating system

2007-07-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

In a previous post about software companies taking over the world, I made some comments about my initial experience with Windows Vista on my laptop. I want to now dedicate a post to talking about it. There will be some repetition, but lots of it will be new.

I really like Vista, and as I use it more and read about some of the things that Microsoft has done with it, I like it more and more. Here are the things I like:

There's lots of eye candy. I like something that looks good and works well, and while Microsoft has mostly gotten the latter in the past, they've done well with the former this time around. I'm not the only one who likes something that looks great - Apple has had lots of success in recent years because, not only are their products really easy to use, but they have a unique level of class that you don't find in lots of other electronics. In Vista, I really like the translucent windows that allow you to see what's behind them, as well as the fact that text is easily readable regardless of its size. I like the animations associated with minimizing and restoring windows, and I like the fact that when windows are minimized, holding the mouse over their icon in the taskbar (at the bottom of the screen) will display a "live" thumbnail - you get a small version of the actuall window (so if you're watching a movie, the live thumbnail will show the movie as it plays). All of these obvious things that Microsoft has done to change the graphics system in Windows is a result of many low-level changes that I won't explain here. I have, however, had people look at my laptop and comment about how slick the desktop looks, so that's satisfying.
All of my applications work. As I've said, one of the main reasons I took Linux off of my laptop was because I couldn't find stable, robust applications to do what I want to do. There was some concern before the release of Vista that some of the XP applications wouldn't run on it, and while some people may have had problems, I have had none at all. Everything that I need to work (MS Office, Outlook, Matlab, iTunes, etc.) works perfectly, so I'm happy.
Vista is more secure than other versions of Windows. There are many ways that the Microsoft engineers have tightened up security in Vista. For example, many of the viruses/worms and spyware that infects computers do it by altering the most basic part of the operating system called the kernel. In earlier versions of Windows, most any program that you wanted to install could access the kernal, which made infection by malware easier. In Vista, though, MS has sealed off the kernel from all external programs (except 3rd party security programs), so it's now much more difficult to access. Additionally, Microsoft now requires that a computer user explicitly give his/her consent to install all programs and run some of them. This is a good move because some infected websites secretly install malware programs on your computer when you visit them, and if I were to accidentally visit one, the installation would no longer occur without my knowing and consenting. The only way the bad program could be installed is if I weren't reading and mindlessly gave my consent. Finally, in previous versions of Windows, all of the core libraries were always loaded into RAM on startup in the same place. Malware that altered some of those core libraries could spread itself very quickly and very easily because they are in the same location in memory in all computers. Vista changes this by loading its libraries into random locations in memory every time it starts up. That way, even if one computer gets infected, the chances are that others catch the infection are much lower. I don't know if Vista is more secure than other operating systems out there, but it's certainly much more secure than previous Windows versions, which is a plus.
Finally, Vista is smart about its memory management. This is contradictory to what I said in my previous post - that the reason I decided to try other operating systems was because I disliked how much RAM Vista requires. I've since discovered why Vista uses so much RAM. First of all, it requires a bit more than XP because it has more to do than XP. However, that's not the source of the major usage increase. The culprit here is a Vista feature called SuperFetch, which monitors how and when you use the programs on your computer, and according to how much free RAM you have and that usage pattern, tries to load program files into RAM before you need them. The effect that this has is to speed up how long it takes for a program to load once you start it up. In XP, when you click a program icon, the OS would locate the program file on the hard disk and load it to RAM, which was a long process. In Vista, though, if the program has already been loaded from the hard disk before you need it, then it will start much more quickly when you need it. So all of the memory that I saw being used up when I wasn't doing anything was being used to pre-load programs that Vista thought it likely that I'd use. The cool thing about this feature is that if you open a program that needs lots of free memory, Vista can dump all of these pre-loaded programs to free up space for it. In this way, Microsoft has come up with a way to use more memory when you don't need it, but to free it up when you do. I like that.

Are there any negatives? Just one: always having to click "Accept" every time I want to run certain programs gets a little tiring (one of the new security features). Other than that, I really like Vista.

goodbye Linux

2007-06-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

Well, my Linux experience was pretty short-lived; I took it off of my system a few days ago. Here are the reasons why.

One of the main uses for an operating system is to allow you to run the software that you need/want to run. Linux has lots of software available, and the vast majority of it is free, but it suffers stability and functionality issues. I've noted in a previous post that I had several applications inexplicably crash on me within the course of a single day, and I never figured out why. I tried using the Office suite to type up a couple of documents, and found several bugs that cramped my style. And finally, there's no Linux media application that can really compare to iTunes. I know, lots of this is personal opinion, but then, this is my personal computer, and my opinion is really the only one that matters. I don't like the applications, and that is the biggest reason I stopped using Linux.
The operating system had some weird quirks. For example, after waking my computer up from its sleep state, several times the mouse and keyboard drivers weren't activated, so the system didn't respond to my input. I had to put the computer to sleep and wake it up again to get it working right. Additionally, though I got the wireless card working, it didn't work perfectly. For example, when I'd turn wireless off to save power, I couldn't get it to turn back on without restarting the system. Finally, Linux seemed to be a power hog...my battery seemed to drain much more quickly than it does under Windows. Lots of minor issues, but added up, they're a problem.
Finally, tinkering with Linux was taking away from family time. I spend lots of time at school, and when I come home, I want to be home with my family. With Linux, though, I spent lots of my home time working on the computer either trying to get stuff to work or customizing my experience. I think that I'd rather spend time with my family, thank you very much.

So...I know that the Linux experience was short-lived, but now I can at least say that I experienced it. Perhaps the short experience was all for the better.

Linux observations...2nd round

2007-06-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

After having using my installation of Linux for the second day, I have some more observations to make.

There's an awful lot of software out there, for pretty much anything one wants to do. In the distribution I'm running, there's a program called a package manager, which has a list of thousands of the most common/best programs. I just have to pick the category of software that I want to browse, or alternatively, I can perform a search for something more specific. For example, although Ubuntu comes with a music player and with a video player, I tried them both, and wasn't terribly impressed. After a brief internet search for something more popular, I searched for it in the package manager, clicked "install", and about a minute later, was using a much better media player. I like the simplicity and the one-stop nature of the software manager.
Have you ever installed a Windows program, tried to run it, and had it give you an error that it was missing some component that it needed? That's kind of annoying, but not much of a problem with Ubuntu. For most of the programs, especially the ones in the package manager, they have a list of dependencies that they require, and when you install them, they automatically select those dependencies to be installed as well. Thus, you don't get errors of that kind when you try to run them for the first time.

However, not everything was good and rosy...

In Windows, my mouse pad/touch pad was very responsive, especially for the tap action that generates a mouse click. In Linux, though, much of the time, it wouldn't immediately respond to my normal tap, and I'd have to really exaggerate my tapping action to have it register. When I do lots of clicking, and tapping to click doesn't work very well, that's not good.
Not all of the software is completely stable. I know that people might raise their eyebrows at this, responding "and you think all Windows software is stable?", but when you have three different programs inexplicably crash at least once (and some of them multiple times) within a period of a single day, it raises an issue. And these weren't obscure programs, either. Two of them were media players that randomly crashed, sometimes not even returning an error. The third was the Linux equivalent to Outlook, which, when I tried to mark a task complete, suddenly and seemingly without reason, quit on me. I've read about how stable and secure Linux is, especially compared to Windows, but if the programs themselves are crash-prone, the effect on productivity is similar.

Reaching our potential...with help

2007-06-19T06:12:00.001-07:00

Last night for Family Home Evening, our lesson came from the last chapter in Sherrie Dew's book "If Life were Easy, it Wouldn't be Hard." The general subject of the lesson was on reaching our potential and not limiting our Father in the blessings that He can give us.

One of the stories that Sister Dew told was one of Joseph Smith, who, in praying before a meal, said something along the lines of "Lord, we thank thee for this Johnny cake, and pray for something better." Before his family finished eating, someone knocked on the door, bringing a ham and some other food for them, and thus answering Joseph's prayer.

The story is simple, and yet the idea of thanking the Lord for a blessing, and then asking for something more is a little foreign to me. I don't want to be greedy, but at the same time, Sister Dew's point is that we limit what the Lord can bless us with because we simple don't plead for those blessings. After all, as she points out, if we're all striving to gain eternal life, which is the greatest gift of God, why should we not strive to gain some of the other gifts and blessings He has to offer?

When we hear the word "unbeliever", we often think about an atheist or someone who turns away, in some form, from God. Yet I wonder if I've ever been an unbeliever in the sense that I don't believe that God can or will bless me with the things that He has promised to. I know that I don't put as much effort into prayer as I could or ought to, pleading for these blessings to come to me. I hope to change that. I hope to gain a vision of what the Lord can bless me with, and then seek to receive them from His hand.

Linux...here I come!

2007-06-17T21:53:00.000-07:00

Several posts back, I complained about the hard disk and RAM requirements of Vista, though there are lots of things I like about it. I finished the post concluding that I'd probably stick with Vista (as opposed to trying some other operating system, like Linux), but that I'd let you know if I was going to do something different.

Well...I decided to do something different. I decided to install Linux alongside Vista. That would give me my familiar operating system to use when I needed to get work done that I didn't know how to do otherwise, while at the same time giving me a way to learn a new operating system. If you don't know, Linux is free, stable, and has relatively low hardware requirements. It also comes in at least several hundred flavors, one of which I had to choose to put on my computer. So, I did some research, and chose the current most popular version, Ubuntu, which is actively being developed, and has a reputation for being user friendly.

Linux is different from Windows, in several ways. First of all, it is NOT intended to be a Windows replacement. Some people, when they become annoyed with Windows, switch to Linux, expecting it to replace Windows, and then are surprised, and sometimes annoyed, to find that it's not. Most Windows applications don't work on Linux, though there are lots of really good applications to do similar things. What Linux is, however, is an operating system designed to give its users great freedom and flexibility in setting it up. This requires some user knowledge and time to do correctly, as there is a learning curve associated with setup. I recently read a good analogy for the differences between Windows and Linux. Let's say that you want a toy car. There are several ways that you could get one. One way would be to go to a toy store, and purchase a molded, or otherwise pre-assembled car. This is Windows...the developers at Microsoft hand you your operating system on a silver platter, pre-compiled, and with everything working as they think it should work. Another way that you could end up with a toy car, though, would be to go and purchase a Lego kit, which would come with all of the pieces that you need, together with a set of instructions, and let you build your own toy car. This is Linux: you can add the components of the operating system that you need to get the computer system that you want. Assembly is required, though.

Anyhow, so I installed Linux yesterday afternoon after figuring out how I wanted to configure it. Once up and running, I had a couple of issues, both of which were easy to resolve:

My monitor wouldn't display the correct resolution. It's native resolution is 1440 x 900 pixels, but Linux would only allow me to set it at 1024 x 768. I resolved that issue by downloading and installing a package which would give me more choice in resolution, set the correct one (actually, it set it for me), and haven't had problems since.
My wireless adapter didn't work. This was a problem, since I spend lots of time on the internet. What I ended up having to do is download the Windows version of the driver for the adapter, and then use a "wrapper" (ie, a piece of code) to make it work with Linux. That worked beautifully and I'm now typing this post connected to the internet wirelessly.

There are lots of things that I already like about this new operating system:

It's light and it's fast. I said in my other post that Windows requires something like 15 GB of hard disk space to install. Since then, I've figured out at least part of why that is - it's because Microsoft almost never takes anything away from old OS's when they build new ones. For example, Vista uses a completely different graphics library than XP did, but Microsoft kept the old libraries anyway (they wanted to keep backwards compatibility for all of the programs that use the old libraries). Thus, I'd guess that each successive version of Windows will get larger than its predecessor. Whereas Windows requires 15 GB to install, Linux did it in only about 4 GB. Vista uses 600-800 MB of my RAM. Linux only uses about 250 MB. I like these things, as they free up system resources for other things.
Boot up and shut down times are very fast. It takes about 20 seconds to competely shut down my computer.
The software is good. I haven't yet used lots of it, but I'm typing this post in Firefox, which I also use in Windows. I've also used a very good graphics software called Gimp to edit some images. I don't know whether it's true or not, but Linux fans say that Gimp has much of the same functionality as Photoshop. It just doesn't cost nearly as much.
There's a central way to install software and check for updates. In Windows, if I want to check for software updates, I have to do it for each program individually (ie, if I want to check for an update to iTunes, I've got to open iTunes and ask it to check for me). In Linux, though, installing new software and checking for updates is as simple as opening my package manager and letting it do the work. That's really nice.

Anyhow, those are just some of my initial impressions. I haven't been using this system for more than a day, so I'll post more impressions once I have them.

That's all, folks.

I'm such a geek

2007-06-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

Kimberly and I generally try to get to bed at the same time as each other each night, and these days, that time revolves around Joy's final feeding of the day. Usually, we put Joy to bed for the night at 8:30 or 9 pm, and then Kimberly gets her up to feed her at about 11, after which we all go to bed for the night.

Sometimes, though, I'm ready for bed by the time it's time for Joy's feeding, so while Kimberly feeds her, I have a little time to wait. A couple of nights ago, I had been working on something on my laptop that I hadn't finished, so I decided to take it into the bedroom while I waited. Here's what happened once Kimberly finished feeding Joy...

She comes into the bedroom and sees Phillip laying on the bed with his laptop propped on his chest, reading something.

She remarks, "Phillip, you know...some people go to bed and watch TV before sleeping. Others take a book with them to bed. [laughing] My husband takes his computer to bed."

She then takes a look at what I'm doing on my laptop, and bursts out "Wow...you are SUCH a GEEK!! Looking at CODE? I at least thought that you'd be looking at the week in pictures, or something!"

So there you go, it's official. I'm officially a geek. But I'm Kimberly's geek, and I take comfort in that. Thanks, sweetheart, for letting me be a geek. :) I love you.

iGoogle...do you?

2007-06-05T15:22:00.001-07:00

Here we go with two tech-related posts in a row. Did you know that if you have a Gmail account, you can personalize your Google search page? Then, every time that you go to www.google.com, instead of getting a boring page with nothing but a search bar in the middle of it, you get a customized page with any number of gadgets that you'd care to put on it. There are all kinds of gadgets that you can put on your home page, with some of them being

A preview of your Gmail inbox
A Wikipedia search bar. Type in what you're looking for, and it'll take you to the online encyclopedia entry matching your search.
YouTube search
Weather forecast
quote of the day
Sudoku puzzles
Google Reader (and RSS reader)

I especially like the inbox preview and the Google Reader gadgets. Why? I've set my iGoogle page to be my homepage, so whenever I open up Firefox, I can immediately see if I have any new mail - I don't always have to be logging into my email account, just to find that there's nothing there. I like Google Reader because it allows me to configure it to see new content posted to any internet site that uses RSS feeds. What are RSS feeds? They are basically a technology for publishing new content to a web site (think about news sites or blogs, which are constantly adding new stuff) which allows programs to automatically capture them without a user manually checking the individual sites. If that's not clear, then let me explain what I use Google Reader for. Because I'm not very good about checking friends' blogs, I configure Google Reader to do it for me. I give it a list of blogs that I'm interested in it tracking, and then anytime someone puts a new post on one of those blogs, a link to it appears in Google Reader. Now I don't have to check 10 different blogs every couple of days to see what's new...I can see new content as soon as I open an internet browser after it's published.

Now that's nice.

My personalized Google home page. Google Reader is outlined in red.

How software companies plan to take over the world

2007-06-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the year, I bought a laptop to allow me to carry my work between school and home, and to aid me in presentations (especially for my lab director). The laptop came with Windows XP, but included a free upgrade to Windows Vista when it was released. Being the techno-geek that I am, I decided that I was going to make the jump from XP to Vista once the upgrade media arrived in the mail.

The upgrade process went very smoothly - I'm now running Microsoft Vista Home Premium on my laptop. There are lots of people with opinions about Vista: some love it, while others really hate it. I like the slick new interface, but then that shouldn't surprise anyone - Kimberly will tell you that I'm the person that likes to make pretty pictures (if I have an engineering project or assignment that requires plots or graphs, I like to make them look good). I like the new, resizeable icons in Vista, I like the translucent windows, I like the animations that accompany minimizing and restoring windows, and I like the Windows sidebar, which allows me to keep tabs on my processor, memory and battery states, as well as put other gadgets on it.

However, all of these cool-looking additions come at a price: Vista is a huge memory hog. I don't know what it is that requires so much memory, but the hit is so big that I had to go out and upgrade my RAM so that I'd have enough. Windows XP on average required 200-400 MB of RAM (many new computers today come with 1 GB, or about 1000 MB of RAM, so XP would use 20-40% of the available memory). Vista uses anywhere from 800-900 MB of RAM - that's a huge increase from XP. That means that all of the memory that I had before to run programs with, I no longer have, which is why I had to go out and upgrade it.

Many people have noted that Windows Vista now looks a lot like Mac OS X, which may very well currently be the best operating system out there. Get this, though: OS X doesn't require anywhere the amount of memory that Vista does. In fact, the requirements for OS X are much lighter than for Vista: 256 MB RAM & 3 GB of hard disk space vs 512 MB RAM & 15 GB hard disk space. However, despite the stated Vista requirements, nobody I've seen who has a well-informed opinion about it's memory requirements thinks that 512 GB is enough - they all suggest that 1 GB is the very minimum, with 2 GB being a safe amount. OS X, however, runs very well on only 512 MB of memory (I know because my Mom has done it). What gives? Where does Vista use all of the memory? I don't know the answer.

Anyhow, I should finally get to the subject of this post. After realizing that Vista requires so many system resources, I started looking to see what alternatives I had. I can't run OS X because it will only legally run on Mac hardware, and to downgrade to XP again would require that I purchase a new license, which would set me back at least $150. I didn't want to do that, so I started exploring Linux, a good, free, light operating system that could potentially compete with Windows as my OS. As I explored its possibilities, guess what I found? I found that all of the software that I've learned and grown used to either only works, or works best with, guess what? Windows. Linux users say that there isn't a Microsoft application that you can't find some Linux-based application to do the same thing, but usually the Linux application doesn't do it as well, it requires a user to learn new software, or, in the case of commercial software, which I have Window's copies of, I'd have to purchase a Linux version. Another issue is cross-compatibility. What if I do move to Linux? I'd better be able to find some software that will open all of my Office documents, especially my Powerpoint presentations. The free Open Office Suite will do that, but it doesn't read the files perfectly, so some objects on the slides get changed.

So guess how these software companies plan to take over the world? Do you know that Microsoft gives student discounts for software like Microsoft Office, and Visual Studio (their development tools)? Do you know that other software companies do the same? The USC bookstore sells lots of really good software (Matlab, Photoshop Elements, CAD tools, other multi-media editing software, etc.) with student discounts. So what happens? Students, when they're getting their education, go out and buy all of this software at discounted prices, learn that software, and get hooked on it. Then they graduate, get jobs, and don't ever want to use any other software, as it would require them to learn something new. By then, though, software companies can charge them full price for new versions of the same software, and make lots and lots of money. Ok, so these companies may not be wanting to take over the world, but they are very good at making money off of us.

What am I going to do about my laptop? I'll probably stick with Windows, just like the other 90% of the world. If I do switch to Linux, though, you'll hear about it.

Screening exam

2007-05-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

On June 24th, I completed my PhD screening exam. This is an exam that is required at the end of the 1st year of the PhD program, and its purpose is to verify that a student is capable of doing research (after all, that is what a PhD is all about). It's a fairly major thing because, even though you've been accepted into the PhD program, if you fail the screening exam, you get kicked out of the program, and have to find something else to do (move into the Master's program, if you can, or go get a job in industry somewhere).

This year, several aspects of the PhD program have been altered, and one of them is the screening exam. It now consists of three portions:

Your grades and RANKS in each of the core courses. The screening exam committee looks at not only your grades, but also how well you did in comparison to the other students in the class. You might have gotten an A- in a course, but if half the rest of the class also got A's, and you're ranked #15 of 30 students, that doesn't look good. In the past, there haven't been a set of core courses that 1st-years had to take, but in order to level the playing field for all doctoral students, they had to do that. Thus, my curriculum for the 1st year was pretty much set for me.
The evaluations of your lab rotation advisors. This year, the committee started a new lab rotation course that splits the first year into a series of three 7-week lab rotations. All 1st-year students must participate in these rotations, and find a lab, together with a research project, for each of them. There are several benefits to this. First, each of the students has the opportunity to do work in multiple labs, which allows them to get a feel for the different research that is going on at the university, and allows them to get a feel for the different types of lab directors/professors and how they run their labs. This is good because traditionally, PhD students have normally been confronted with a scramble to get into a lab that once they're in, lock them in, whether they like it or not. Second, these rotations give multiple professors the opportunity to work with and observe the new students, and evaluate their ability to do independent research. Finally, the rotations give the professors the opportunity to look at the new students and try to recruit any of them that they want into their labs. I think that these rotations are very positive, and I'm glad I got to participate in them.
The final portion of the screening exam is the presentation at the end of the year. It has to be a 10-minute presentation, focused on research (ie, one of the research projects that you did for your rotations). You give your presentation in front of the screening exam committee, which consisted this year of four professors who taught the core classes, and both during and after your presentation, they are free to ask any questions they have. What they're looking for is that you can explain the problem you're working on, together with what you're doing to solve the problem in a clear way. I don't believe they try to ask questions to trip you up, but they will ask questions about anything that's not clear to them. While you're there, they have your grades and lab rotation evaluations sitting in front of them, and sometime after you leave, they discuss your prospects as a researcher.

The presentation portion of my screening exam is what was last Thursday, and it went well. I talked about what I'm currently doing with Ted Berger, and, while the presentation was slightly long (probably 10 1/2 minutes), it went well. There were several questions afterwards, some of which I answered, but I actually had other professors answer a couple of them for me when they were asked, so that was great.

Anyhow, the following day, at about noon, I got an email from the chair of the department saying that I had passed the exam and have moved on to the next phase of my program.

Yay!

Thoughts from General Conference

2007-04-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

This last weekend was General Conference (a satellite broadcast from the prophet and other church leaders in Salt Lake City). I love listening to general conference, which happens each April and October, because our leaders are such inspired men who know what it is that we need to hear and teach it so clearly. Of the five sessions, I was able to watch most of all of them, though the Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon sessions I missed the first part of because of the Grodin's symposium (an annual BME symposium for all USC BME PhD students).

Here are some of the things that were said that really struck me:

"No misfortune is so bad that whining about won't make it worse!" (Elder Jeffrey Holland)
When you're flying a fighter jet, your ear is not sensitive enough that you can sense a 1-degree shift in your direction. Selective obedience to the commandments of God can lead to changing the course of your life 1 degree at a time (Elder Robert Hales, paraphrased).
"The decade of your 20s is the 'decade of decision'." The things that you decide to do in your 20's (like marriage, education, vocation, etc) will set much of the foundation for the rest of your life (Elder Robert Hales).
"We tend to love those scriptures that we spend the most time with" (Elder M. Russell Ballard).

Video of an engineer

2007-03-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago, while Kimberly and I were visiting her family, her dad told me he wanted to show me a video of an engineer that he had found on YouTube. It was a pretty funny video - watch it below. The video that I posted here comes in three segments; the one that you'll want to pay attention to is the second of the three.

The funny part - after I had seen the video, I asked Dad, "How do you know that he is an engineer?" Dad just laughed. Sigh. I guess that I'm just as much an engineer as all the other engineers out there if it's not obvious to me that I'm seeing one.

Reason for this blog

2007-03-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

My first experience with blogging was when some friends of ours created one to show off pictures of their newborn son. Kimberly and I knew that we were expecting at the time, so when we saw how cute their blog was turning out, we thought that we might try the same thing. Thus, when Joy arrived in December, I had our family blog set up, and ready to take/post lots of pictures.

In the last three months since creating our family blog, I've had various other experiences with blogs. Several of my cousins have blogs dedicated to various and sundry things, as do several friends who live in the area, and it's fun to see the things that they post. Then, seeing that people were actually visiting our family blog, Kimberly decided that she wanted to create her own personal blog, which she has here.

I've now become interested in the idea of posting to a blog. In the first several weeks after Joy was born, I was the one doing most of the posting. However, once Spring semester began, and I wasn't at home nearly as often as I had been over Christmas break, my posting dropped off considerably. Good thing Kimberly likes doing it and keeps it updated, because Joy is growing really fast!

Anyhow, I haven't fully defined what this blog will contain, though because I'm an engineer and a techie, it will probably lean towards tech-related things.

That's all for now, folks!