Seen, Heard, Said

Things I’ve seen, heard, or was told by someone. Item in this category usually originate from the Internet.

Physical Theories as Women

July 23, 2008
Love Life...Or Lack Thereof (category), Seen, Heard, Said (category)

0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she’s amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you’re not in touch very much anymore.

1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won’t date long enough to really understand her.

2. Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party…

There are nine in total. Worth reading if you enjoy this sort of thing.

via Kottke

What I Do

July 21, 2008July 21, 2008
Rhymes with "Snowing" (category), Seen, Heard, Said (category)

Here’s the project I work on. It’s from an article that came out in today’s Defense Daily:

From www.defensedaily.com:

Block 40/45 is a $2.2 billion program, with an average cost of $40 million per aircraft, according to Elavsky.

“It is, for all intents and purposes, a complete overhaul of the mission system,” he explained.

He added that commercial off-the-shelf technology “is providing improved computing to allow for better integration.”

“It’s really revolutionary–we’re finally getting a true open architecture system on board the aircraft,” he said. That open architecture will allow programmers to upgrade hardware and software regularly and establish a network for wide-band communications.

Image Source: Boeing

Unsolved Problems

July 18, 2008
Seen, Heard, Said (category)

Alright team, let’s get cracking:

From www.kottke.org:

Another Wikipedia gem: a list of unsolved problems from a number of different fields, including linguistics, physics, and computer science. (via lone gunman)

I think my favorite problem deals with the existence of one-way functions, also called hash functions¹:

From en.wikipedia.org:

Description
One-way functions are easy to compute but hard to invert. Although there are several candidates for which no good (i.e. quick) reverse algorithms are currently known, it hasn’t yet been proven that any function exists for which no such reverse algorithms exist.
Importance
If one-way functions do not exist then public key cryptography is impossible. Their existence would imply that many complexity classes are not learnable, and that Pâ‰ NP.
Conjecture
It is assumed but unproven that they do exist. Several encryption systems are based on the assumption that modular exponentiation is a one-way function.

¹ Kind of. Hash functions usually return a value of fixed length, which precludes them from being true one-way functions.

Cost of Gas

May 26, 2008
Seen, Heard, Said (category)

We’re having an interesting discussion about about gas/oil, oil companies, and the price/net profits of the aforementioned interests over at Audrey’s blog.

Start with $4/gallon and Pointing Fingers and then continue reading with Price Breakdown of Gas.

The conversation seems to be pretty fact based so far and hasn’t broken down to a he-said/she-said argument (or flame war, for that matter), yet.

Note: I’ve disabled comments on this post to make sure I don’t steal the conversation. If you have a comment, leave it on Audrey’s blog.

Top 5 Reasons It Sucks to Be an Engineering Student

May 14, 2008
Seen, Heard, Said (category)

More or less shamelessly taken from Wired. Check out the Wired article to read all the gory details about why it sucks:

5. Awful Textbooks

4. Professors are Rarely Encouraging

3. Dearth of Quality Counseling

2. Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades

1. Every Assignment Feels the Same

Do It

May 3, 2008
Seen, Heard, Said (category)

I’m sure what we’re doing, but when we do…
From www.dkgoodman.com:

Electrical education majors teach it by example.
Electrical engineers are shocked when they do it.
Electrical engineers do it on an impulse.
Electrical engineers do it with faster rise time.
Electrical engineers do it with large capacities.
Electrical engineers do it with more frequency and less resistance.
Electrical engineers do it with more power and at higher frequency.
Electrical engineers do it with super position.
Electrical engineers do it without shorts.
Electrical engineers resonate until it hertz.

via BoingBoing

The World is Just Awesome

April 22, 2008April 22, 2008
Seen, Heard, Said (category)

Discovery Channel’s The World is Just Awesome advert which is “just awesome”:

via Kottke

Andrew Ferguson: Internet Celebrity

April 21, 2008
Seen, Heard, Said (category)

Apparently I’ve bridged the gap, going from nameless blogger to Internet celebrity….at least according to Amanda:
From awalton.wordpress.com:

Amanda:

Studies Electrical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.

…

Is fond of Dungeons and Dragons and video games derived thereof.

Has met Andrew Ferguson – internet celebrity.

Time to Proposal

April 11, 2008
Love Life...Or Lack Thereof (category), Seen, Heard, Said (category)

I can’t remember where I picked this tid-bit up, but a study conducted by National Wedding (they’re British) says that the time between the first date and the proposal is two years, 11 months, and eight days….so about three years.

So Mom, don’t expect any little Fergie’s running around anytime soon.

How To Know If You’re A Trekkie

April 8, 2008
Seen, Heard, Said (category)

Oh, and I get bonus points for noticing that Qapla’ needs an apostrophe after it.

via Savage Chickens via Wil Wheaton’s Link Blog