May 2004 Archives

the world of cutting edge research is not pretty... some of the research that i do can be crude, and more often than not, seems hopeless. the technology that emerges from our lab will one day change the face of how we do clinical diagnostics and experimental research; there's no doubt about that. but man, i swear, sometimes i think we're in over our heads, as i look down at this crudely constructed box which runs our microfluidic devices, and an even cruder setup, with flammable materials and liquids oozing out from the sides. but hey! you got to start somewhere... i guess.

take the first transistor for example. right now, there are literally hundreds of millions of these things crammed into the size no larger than a quarter running that thing you call a computer. i'm sure this was seemingly unfathomable to the minds of bardeen, brattain, and the beloved shockley when they flipped on the power to see the first solid state switch. while our goals aren't so far away, the task seems just as daunting.

as i prepare for my move to korea, i've been working my ass off to jumpstart the user interface with our chips. in other words, programming. but you see, what nobody realises is that i'm not a programmer! i just happened to pick it up out of necessity, because i couldn't stand our DOS-based programs which, as much as i love old-school, was impractical. so now i've somehow managed to move everything to the lovely microsoft mfc's (mfc = makes things pretty). after that critical move, i've been dubbed our software programmer (among other things), which, in my book, is like a death sentence (at least for the social agenda). if you thought being an engineer was bad, try being an engineer AND a programmer. ugh!

you got mc confusion? I'm frontalot!
If I were MC Frontalittle I'd be telling you only ever what I'm not
but I am the most frontingest
carving off the obfuscation, little something just
to confuse you with, and like a villain
I got conundrums, your empty head they gonna fill in
still in effect, the mock you made?
my dexterity ain't 20 when the skills are displayed
s'allright I took it for a compliment
shows you know nerdcore's extent

inarguably the nicest thing about digital cameras is the fact that it documents all the settings used for a particular photo. ever since i started photography, i never really kept track of what aperture and shutter speeds i used. in large part its because i'm lazy, but it's also because i never really wanted approach photography as an exact science, despite my enginerdiness. it's kind of like when i learned how to drive stick; i'd shred up the clutch to my brother's car trying to figure out at what rpm to shift, when all along i should've just gone with the feel. luckily, i learned that lesson before getting my own car . after six months, shifting was a piece of cake and became second nature.

about the photo... i went to the sarah p. duke gardens today to snap more photos, but it's difficult to find anything interesting after being there so many times. the gardens was just begging for macro shots, but it was hard to find one with an interesting background. a flower among a bed of flowers is kind of boring. a flower among a bed of rocks is a bit more interesting.

i went walking around east campus today, a place i'm rarely at other than to pass through when i bike to school. there's this steep hill that passes by the gilbert-addoms dorm, which is fun to speed down, but a pain in the ass to climb up... there's no way getting around it; my office is at a significantly lower elevation than my apartment.

my office has got to be in one of the noisiest places in my buildling. i'm sandwhiched between the loading dock and the huge liquid nitrogen tank. so somewhere between 1 and 3 in the morning, the huge liquid nitrogen tank man in his ridculously loud liquid nitrogen tank truck comes to give us a refill. it's a bit disconcerting to know that if the tank decided to take a leak, it'd probably spill onto my only window, cracking it in the process, and i'd be swimming dead (and quite cold) in a pool of liquid NO2. during normal people hours, all the delivery people pass through my hall, which wouldn't be so bad if the door didn't slam so loud. the worst of it all is at lunchtime, when all the international chinese students fire up their leftover dinners (which does not smell good, lemme tell you), and all the chinese men huddle around the chinese women in their office (adjacent to mine), trying to vie for their attention. the winner is usually the one who can speak the loudest.

about the photo... a statue which stands about fifty cubits in front of the west duke building on east campus. they really ought to put a sign that explains who and what this guy is doing there, as i have no clue of his significance. man, i would make an awful tour guide!

so this is where duke sticks international students during the summ.. ok, ths irelss kybord i'm using is running dangereuly low on batteris so you'll have to excus me for th missng lettrs. . will post more latr.

ok, much better... things have finally relaxed a bit at work, so i finally have some free time to do, well, pretty much nothing. this time next week, i should be preparing myself for a marathon of sake bombs with em and dave, which, from the aftermath i saw last time they did that, i am not looking forward. but don't get me wrong, i will no doubt be the victor! well, it's 5 pm, my favorite time to shoot photos, so i'm off...

about the photo... i shot this photo walking down that path from the picture yesterday, which to my surprise, did not lead to The Shire. instead, it led me to this, an abandoned shed. never has trespassing private property let me down this badly...

i went out today and got myself a canon g5, a full two months after i originally considered getting one (which, in my book, is an unusually long time!). i've been wanting to shoot color, but didn't want to go through the hassle of developing it (which takes much longer than b&w) or having to go to the shop. my eye has been on some digital SLRs, but i honestly hate carrying around full-body cameras like my pentax k1000. with a lot of travelling coming up, this should be the perfect solution.

about the photo... i took this photo on the way home so i could have an image to play around with. it was taken off mt moriah road, which is where i used to live a year ago. it kinda looks like a path to The Shire, alas, it is not. i must admit, i've got a loong way to go before i understand all fine details with color balancing, contrast, etc... but for now, i'm pretty much gonna smash buttons randomly in photoshop to process these pics.

here's a question... how come all the good movies and tv shows are ending this year? november and december brought the end of the matrix and LOTR trilogies, and more recently we've seen the end of sex and the city and in a couple days, friends... this is also the last season for the sopranos (i think...), which just plain sucks (the fact that its ending, not the series!)...

about the photo... post ice storm run-off from the abandoned tobacco warehouse across the street taken in late january off my very first roll of film. blue devil ventures has been meaning to do something with it for years now, and god only knows what goes on in there.