Fahrenheit 451

Katie and I attended the screening of Fahrenheit 451 at the Ross for her film class. The film was troubling in its futuristic concept of a world where no one reads books, everyone is zombified in front of 40-inch televisions, and antidepressants are handed out like candy.

I'm so glad they were wrong.

Stolee the Writing Writer

Recently, a friend brought up the idea of participating in National Novel Writing Month, except in February before losing interest or resolve. I found this to be a fascinating idea and will give it a shot. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. In February, there are 29 days giving me a requirement of 1725 words a day, average.

Challenge yourself! Do something in February. Other ideas included recording a full album in a month (or writing the songs for one), write a full-length screenplay, film a movie, do a wood-working project. Find something.

Really, please do. I need more peer pressure to actually do this. February is fast approaching.

Lunchboxspot

Today, I arrived early enough to get my place on the refrigerator door for my lunchbox. Sometimes, someone else places their pink lunchbox there and makes me angry.

What is Going On?

The past few weeks have been hectic, and I have lost my blogging habit. I hope to rekindle this obsession with telling the world of my life, even if it falls on deaf ears (and blind eyes/unclicked links/etc.). Recently, I cannot decide if taking an Algebra qualification exam or completing the Endless Setlist on Rock Band will be my most extreme achievement. I guess I'll wait to see how successful the qual was.

Now that the qual is done, I can start thinking about fun math again. I'm thinking of giving a talk at the Graduate Student Combinatorics Conference, and am going through some papers on a few topics. First and foremost, I'm going over my references for my thesis work. I think this is an interesting problem with lots of potential for difficult mathematics. Another topic is adapted list coloring of graphs, particularly in the planar case. Finally, my advisor and I are working with some undergraduates in subspace intersection graphs.

So many topics, and they are all fun. I'm sad I have to teach in the morning or I'd stay up late reading these papers some more.

Only Qualified to Sleep

This afternoon was my retake of the Algebra Ph.D. Qualification Exam (very official). After studying tirelessly the past few days, the test was not terribly easy but not terribly difficult either. It was one of those tests that seemed like it should have been harder. I hate that feeling. The worst part is that I dedicated at least a third of my time to learning a topic I didn't quite catch last year only to find that it was not on the exam.

I don't know how long it will take to get the results as I was the only person to take this particular exam. I know, people usually get it right the first time...

Performance-Enhancing Drugs

The January exams are this week, and I make attempt two at the algebra qualification exam on Wednesday. In order to study, I've been going through past quals and doing at least the minimum number of problems, but at least doing as much as I can.

In order to keep on task, I've been utilizing several forms of caffeine and isolation. I brought only some scratch paper, my iPod, textbooks, and calculator up to the lounge. Leaving the computer behind was important. But also, I brought my thermos of coffee and my caffeinated mints. This isn't such a shocking idea, as mathematicians have required extra help to stay alert before.

For a four-hour exam, I'll need to monitor my diet and rest from now until then. This marathon math session will be painful enough because of the exam.

Toilet Travels

The apartment toilet has been having issues, and this morning a plumber came in to replace it. So, I leave to work in my office so I can use the facilities there. As soon as I arrive and finish my business, Katie calls and is going to drive to town despite the weather. Thus, I need to go back to the apartment and clean before she arrives.

A Foray Into HDR

The web has gone crazy for High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. If you don't believe me, Google it. My attempt was located at the church where Katie and I will be married. I took the pictures at 2:00 PM, when the sun is low in the southern sky leading to the bright sun across the crucifix. However, this lead to such a great contrast that my camera was confused. I used the -2/0/+2 EV trick that all the tutorials used (plus some extras between and around these values) but the brights were too bright in all but the darkest of the pictures. Anyway, here are the pictures:


I look forward to another "shot" at this interesting effect. Note that I had to do all of the HDR tweaking manually instead of using built-in tools such as those in Photoshop CS2. This made it more difficult and perhaps an experienced professional could have done better even with the images I took.

Panoramas

Last year, I traveled to Japan and Estes Park and returned with some shots that I finally turned into panoramas when I purchased Calico stitching software. My quick review: works well and painlessly. By a friend's recommendation, the shots were printed at Big Photo Help with pigment-based ink, and by another's recommendation I framed them using foam board, acrylic (from eStreet Plastics) and Swiss Clips. I gave a couple of these as gifts, but made three for myself. Below, I have links to the full-size versions, and some pictures of the framed versions.







Unpleasant but necessary disclaimer: All photos are copyright 2007 Derrick Stolee. Request for use or for full versions. Source images available by request.

New Blog Title

The suggestion from my dad, "Thoughts on a Tangent" is the new blog title, since it is the one I liked the best. Again, this change was important since Google thinks my blog is about hats. This should be in effect once the spider comes around again.

A Year in Review: 2007

The year is done, so it is time for a compilation of my favorite memories from the past year, especially those posted here in the blog.

January followed the Christmas where I received a fantastic camera, so I was excited to use it when snow fell in Lincoln and during a ski trip with my dad.


February was a month between design and construction phases of design studio where my team put together a music video, "Code Monkey." Later, this video became a featured video on YouTube.


March was dominated by the trip to Japan for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, with surprising results. After the contest, we traveled to Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Sapporo. There are some other pictures including our stop in a capsule hotel.


April was rather uneventful, outside of entering the Catholic church and getting engaged to my beautiful fiancée, Katie Thomasset. Also, we visited Tom doing his racewalking thing, I finished my thesis, and decided to attend graduate school at UNL for Mathematics.


May featured my graduation, which was really a transition from on-campus to off-campus. As summer started, so did my travels, starting with a trip to Canada to renovate the Annex. I then took some qualification exams to get a head start on my graduate studies.


June saw my mother and I overseas again, this time in Africa to build homes for AIDS orphans. This was the second trip for the year where I doubled the number of continents where I had been, adding Africa and Europe to North America and Asia.

July included frequent travel to Kansas City to visit Katie, but also a family reunion up in Canada. Katie survived meeting the Stolees well enough. As it was, there was very little blog material.

August completed my travels with a canoe trip in the boudary waters with Dad and a trip to Estes Park with Katie's parents. Then, I moved back to Lincoln into my new apartment near the stadium with my old roommate and prepared for classes to begin at the end of the month.

September and October were dominated by several math jokes, due to temporary insanity in my overload of math courses. Overload is a poor choice of word, since it was just enough to make me go nuts but not enough to make me dislike what I'm doing.

November's most excited happenings were the releases of two DVD movies for my favorite series: Battlestar Galactica and Futurama. The Futurama post got me a lot of hits for people wondering about the code, but currently I am the very first hit for a Google search for "piecosahedron." I also replaced my PowerBook of four and a half years with a shiny new MacBook.

December signaled the end of the fall semester with a grueling finals week and Christmas travels. Katie and I went to her parents' house for Christmas, and then up to the great white north for the Bakken Christmas and seeing my high school friends. We stayed out to ring in the new year, in old fashioned style: with wild game cooked by Luke's mom and watching TV until we are tired enough to go home.

This year was a good one. The next is also promising, with Katie's graduation and our wedding steadily approaching. MMVIII is sure to be full of bloggable material, so thanks for reading and I look forward to your readings in the future.