Caltech

Spring Break in Boston

So it's 3rd term at Caltech. This term is full of events - from PF² (prefrosh friday) to PFW (prefrosh weekend) to MAD Day (Make-A-Difference day) to the Ruddock Camping trip. Adventure abounds! For those of you who don't know already - PF² was April 8th, PFW is April 14th - 16th. Please note: there ARE activities on April 16th (Saturday) which we call 'Student Life Saturday' so you don't need to leave until 5pm when all events for the day end [unless you already booked your plane tickets or w/e]. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or Admissions (for PFW information, ask for Karly!)

For those of you who are attending PFW 2011 and you have a bunch of pictures (please share :D) to share with the rest of Caltech - send them to Undergraduate Admissions Media Submissions group via the email address ugmedia@caltech.edu ! It would also help if you identified as many people in any photo you have or provide brief comments to make it easier for the rest of us when we post them online. I hope everyone enjoys PFW and I'll see you all tomorrow at 1pm!

Alright alright. Before I get started in reliving the past for you folks - let me quickly talk about OPI.

Jurassic Park OPI

So it's happened! I'll keep this section pretty short but I'll sum up some things. After 3 months of slaving, sweating, and bleeding all over - we built it. Here's some pictures of what we've built!

This is the upper level along the East side of the courtyard.

As you can see - here's the trusty table saw we used for everything. Poor thing suffered - it was starting to break >.<

We angled some lights at the T-rex in the most intimidating way... I can't even look at this picture directly - it still gives me the creeps.

And Franz is sitting on it... Yeah. What a beast.

.. Oh - I meant the T-rex.

And then we had the party the next night. Here's a guest (one of my favorite Ruddock Alums)

Anton! He's with his girlfriend. Here's my story - They came to the party separately and were embarrassed that they were wearing the same outfit!

That's all the pictures I'll post really - most of the other bloggers will have talked more about the actual OPI party.

Also, during the construction, I mentioned we had a camera which was taking a timelapse video of it (a picture every 30 seconds of the courtyard). Here's the video:

 

If you pause randomly - you might find me in a maroon-ish shirt [The Fifth Element Ditch Day Stack 2009] or a blue shirt. I was particularly amused by the inflatable pool inflating/deflating and I loved the trippy-epic lights at the end that signified the actual party we had. Awesome, no? We also had a virtual OPI flash video made here <http://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Eajgong/OPI/2011opipano.swf> which allowed you to click+drag the mouse around to view a 3D reconstruction of the party when it was finished being built.

Now? Well - we're deconstructing. If you don't understand what that means - just read my blog page of posts from top to bottom and see how the pictures start from 'finished' to 'dismantled'? That's what we're doing.. OPI construction - but in reverse.

Now on to the main event of this post...

Spring Break in Boston and MIT

(sing this in the tune of 'Springtime for Hitler and Germany')

Caltech's spring break was from March 17th to March 27th [a whole 10 days]! For those who are lucky (or determined) enough to finish all their exams earlier... spring break could start on March 10th!

So - I flew over to Logan Airport in Boston and stayed with my girlfriend (Sheila) for the week at MIT. Obviously, a reason was to see Sheila - but I also wanted to meet a couple of researchers at LIGO MIT (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory) about doing research there over the summer. Before I get ahead of myself here, I'll start from the beginning.

Day 1 - 7:00 am

I get in the airport and I'm simply waiting to get my luggage. Also waiting for...

Sheila! <3 We get on the bus to get to the subway to get to MIT...

There I am! Anyway, we get to MIT and we're off to meet some of Sheila's friends before they leave for their spring break too! Here's a couple of pictures of the area around the dorm which I'm staying in:

And that's the student center straight in the back - it contains a grocery store, lots of places to eat, and a reading room to study [among other things]. So we meet up with Rahul, Sheila's friend who is also deaf [like the both of us], and they take me around to see the sights of MIT! So - the following sequence of pictures represent the areas we walked down so enjoy the ride.

Strange - at Caltech, our bikes stay on the ground.

That's Boston over there - across the bridge.

See it clearly? So we cross the intersection to get over to the main MIT buildings.

We walked through the MIT MechE building and come outside to see...

The dome! So, we're on the lawn in front of the MIT dome right now. The place is pretty beautiful.

 

And of course - I just HAD to have a picture of the MIT dome with the Caltech shirt I'm wearing... Yeah.... yeah...

Here's a picture of Rahul, Sheila's finger, and myself. She's not used to the iPhone camera :P

So we continue walking through the MIT buildings - one of them had a series of demotivational posters which apparently represents MIT students? I'm unclear on the story behind this... but I most likely represent the 'laziness' one in the middle of the top row.

After walking through a series of mazes within buildings - we come outside and I see the Stata center I've heard so much about the architecture of!

Directly outside of the Stata center.

The surfaces were super-shiny and reflective!

We stood under it and looked up to see ourselves. So - we entered the Stata center now. The whole place seemed to be built for laboratory research in computer science as well as attracting tourists.

Police Cruiser, 1994: "As with most of the great hacks, this installation was both more and less than it appeared to be. Those on the ground could not see, for example, the dummy police officer was cooling her heels behind the wheel with a toy gun, a cup of coffee, and a box of donuts. Neither from the ground nor from the air could spectators appreciate the details: fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, a yellow sign on the back window warning 'I Break for Donuts', a parking ticket affixed to the windshield saying 'No permit for this location,' and the IHTFP license plate, or the car number being Pi. But details, seen or unseen, are a point of honor with hackers."

House Cow, 1979: "A life-size fiberglass steer 'borrowed' from the Hilltop Steak House in Saugus, Massachusetts found its way to the top of the great dome. When 'Ferdi' returned home, the Hilltop's management placed a mortar board on its head and a diploma in its mouth."

The building itself on the inside was painted a wide variety of spring-type colors which made the whole place seem bright and happy!

Here's an actual lab within the building. It looks so playful... But I'm totally sure they're hard at work... or hardly working.

And there was a giant parabolic mirror sculpture at the bottom floor in the front entrance of the Stata center. For those who know your optics - if you stand far outside the focal point, you see yourself upside down. If you stand inside the focal point, you see yourself right side up. And if you stand at the focal point - you don't see yourself at all!

Again, I just had to have a picture of MIT and Caltech. Next to this was...

The famous infinite corridor! It's pretty long. Now, some of you might be like.. "Well, I've seen longer corridors." Basically - it's not just the length of it but also the width of it (IE: the total area of the corridor) that makes it famous and biggest of its time.

As we leave the building...

We saw a busload of asian tourists come to visit MIT. From what Sheila tells me - they come EVERYDAY.

Those are some big columns - if you know what I mean.

Let's play "Find Giordon!"

As I was walking across the street - I noticed an interesting structure.

And I just had to get a closer look. Turns out it's a structure of mathematical symbols and greek letters and whatnot.

This concludes the end of the first day at MIT!

Day 2 - 9:00 am

So day 2 - we totally slept in late since it was the weekend. Another one of Sheila's friends was leaving today so we had brunch with her over at Flour (http://flourbakery.com/). Minshu (the soon-to-depart friend), Sheila, and I had a delicious brunch:

I believe I ordered something with brie, apples, roast turkey, cranberries, and avocado - it was pretty darn good. We also took the time for some photo ops

After all the fun and games - we left Minshu so she could get going for spring break. Meanwhile, Sheila and I kept walking off campus and headed towards the MIT Museum. After about 2 hours wandering around inside the museum and taking pictures of stuff - we left. Apparently - there were a whole bunch of signs saying not to take pictures or videos of things... that I apparently missed... so I can't post them for public consumption (oops!) However, I can post the facade of the building!

I think it was around 1pm by now and we headed back towards MIT. It was somewhat cold but rather windy (which makes it feel much colder!). Given that I've lived in Florida (where everything is flat) and near Los Angeles (where everything is foggy and smoggy) - I haven't seen any sort of city skyline in person really... that I remember seeing. So I told Sheila that I wanted to see the Boston skyline. We went to the top of the McCormick Dorm and stood out on the patio - also, I'm not very photogenic... :P

And in this picture - I'm merely frowning at how cold my face feels and how it's taking Sheila to take the picture... :P We go back to the room so Sheila can talk to a couple of her friends to make plans to meet up with them tonight.

~some finite time passes~

It's nighttime and we've traveled to Harvard Square along the super-awesome Metropolitan Boston Transportation Authority (MBTA) vehicles (subway, bus, etc). Honestly - this has to be one of the best ways to get anywhere within a city using cards with RFIDs that swipe and being super-fast and cheap as well.

This is a somewhat blurry picture of Harvard Square. On the left is the back of Sheila - on the right is the back of Jenny (Sheila's friend). Guess where we ate? Hint: they're both total asians.

Hong Kong Restaurant in Harvard Square!

We ordered a lot of different things. From what I recall - there was chicken with tofu and black bean sauce, white rice, barbeque pork, lo mein noodles, and this lobster daily special.

Jenny certainly loves her food.

She also loves taking pictures.

We certainly had a lot of fun hanging out in Harvard Square and talking about all sorts of things. Jenny's a CS major and happened to know about the Penny Auction when I asked her (I was trying to sound all smart... but turns out you can't do that with MIT students either :P)

The Penny Auction goes like this - there's a dollar bill being auctioned off. It's worth $1.00 - you value it at $1.00. We each bid - the highest bid pays and gets the dollar. The losing bid pays and gets nothing. Now, you and I are playing in this auction and the goal is to make the most money possible. I bid a single penny. Now, because you can make 98 cents instead of nothing, you bid 2 cents. Continuing in this fashion, I bid 99 cents. But since you had already bid at most 98 cents - you would be paying 98 cents and losing all that money! So you bid $1.00 . However, since I bid 99 cents, I will lose 99 cents, and so on. As you can see - there's no clear winner. Moral: don't ever play this game with a competitive friend!

So we're back to Harvard Square and it's like 10pm. As we discover, (for whatever reason), the buses stop running so we went to look for a taxi to take us back. Across the street - you can see a gated entrance to Harvard Yard where all the freshman live.

Here's a better picture - the bus that goes between MIT and Harvard stops here, directly in front of Harvard. As you probably guessed, if you went to either Harvard or MIT, it's super-easy to travel back and forth between the two w/o having to drive a car. So, back to our lack-of-transportation-cause-its-late-for-non-college-people: we get on the subway and travel back to Kendall square (on the wrong side of MIT campus relative to where the dorms actually are [most dorms, at least the ones we're staying in for spring break]). Here are some pictures of the walls of the Kendall Square subway station - a 'square' grid of the timeline of MIT by year:

This ends Day 2.

Day 3: The Tourist Travel Travesty

I tried to get an awesome alliteration that kind of sums up what today was all about :P So, when I was in high school - I watched a lot of Food Network because, seriously, who doesn't love Alton Brown? In a few of the shows, they visited Boston's famous Quincy Market which is a haven for those who love shopping and food (IE: Sheila, Jenny, etc...). So I told Sheila I wanted to go there so we did.

We woke up late again as usual but both of us had to do some quick work before we went anywhere. I had to finish up proofreading the first problem set for IST4 - a class I'm TAing in 3rd term. I'll talk more about this in future blog posts!

Anyway - we got on the subway and prepared to make a few switches at different stations... here's a map showing what we had to do:

The Red Line was through MIT/Harvard into Boston. From there - we switched over to the Blue Line which only went for one stop. As it turns out, there was a large amount of construction so we got rerouted onto a series of buses which took us to the blue line station after the next one. From here - we got back on the subway which took us to an airport... which was totally in the wrong direction of where we needed to go. We quickly got off this subway, ran up 2 flights of stairs, across the subway platform to the other side. We got back on to the subway station the bus dropped us off at (which turned out to only work in the one direction). So we got out of the subway station and BACK on the bus. Another 20 minutes later, we were finally at Quincy Market. Sheila admitted that she had never really gone on Blue Line much... and I could see why - it was a little confusing - but that was probably because of the construction... but we're finally there!

For those of you who are seafood lovers - Quincy Market is located within 5 miles from all the fisherman wharfs - I suggest going here if you want to taste some cheap, delicious Boston Clam Chowder (I'm talking to you Brian [my roommate]). Enjoy a photo montage of Quincy Market

On the left is a whole series of shopping centers. On the right (middle of three long buildings) is the food market. To the right of that would be another series of shopping centers.

 South Market - the shopping center on the left. First thing we do is go into the Crocs store as Sheila needed a comfy pair of high heels to dance in because she's on the Asian Dance Team at MIT.

Afterwards - we went inside the food market just to take a look around before we went shopping. We planned to do a lot of window shopping on the left and right shopping centers and then eat afterwards.

If you look really closely in the distance - you see a short, horizontal blue line. Just under this was another shorter, horizontal blue line with a white area under it. This area here was the center:

This is where you would go to sit and eat after getting your food.

Continuing through to the other end presents us with even more food restaurants and varieties to pick from! (Holy crap, there was a LOT). We passed by a candy/sweets/bakery which I thought had a lot of clever (and probably delicious) treats!

And cute pacman-like cupcakes and chipwiches. Sheila and I decided to try some of the Boba from one of the shops. I got a pineapple boba, she got jasmine boba.

So then, we went around to the far-right shopping center and walked up along the side of it to see what shops there were. We saw some really interesting things like a super-cute dress

Can you spot my face in this picture?!

And so we kept going up towards the front end. Then we approached a comic book store which was one of those super-trendy (maybe nerdy at times) stores filled with gag toys, music, dvds, cds, t-shirts, and all sorts of fan-based items. But the sign for the front of the store was pretty hilarious...

And inside, they had a great selection of books...

This last book is dedicated towards my Russian friend Alexandre (Sasha). We found some super-awesome items within the store...

If I have to tell you what the shirt says - you don't deserve Seinfeld!

Like FireFly, this show was canceled way too soon.

They even had a cup with Dexter on it! Thanks to Viola Rose for introducing this show into my life.

----

Dear Tom Hanks, you are an idiot. You found a machine that grants ultimate powers. Why not ask for World Peace or advanced superior technology? Sincerely, Giordon Stark.

Dear Tom Hanks' Mother, you are a horrible mother. Your kid was missing for weeks. Why did you not contact the police? Sincerely, Giordon Stark.

----

After going through the whole store - we headed over to the other shopping center and into another store (I believe Urban Outfitters). This store was somewhat unique, but it was shaped like an 'n'. The second floor connected the two separated bottom floors.

Some books they were selling - Dirty Language! Don't try and use these to translate your way in other countries, I'm sure you'll be arrested in no time flat.

Sheila decided to try on a lot of hats - she wanted one for the cold weather.

 She got this one - I liked it a lot :D After shopping more - we got a photo op to prove we were actually at Quincy Market :P

I'm seriously really bad at smiling for the camera. Anyhow - it was nearly 5pm so we went inside to get food to bring back to MIT dorm. Sheila wanted to shop more. So we went back on the subway over to Downtown Crossing. More photos!

A four-story Borders! Everything in Boston is at least 3 stories. I'll soon learn of this (somewhat strange) rule when I visit other places in Boston.

Even the fast-food restaurants were pretty fancy-looking.

 

It's around 8pm and we're looking for a subway to take us back to MIT! The places look pretty good at nighttime. After getting back to Kendall Square at MIT, we take a shortcut through a bunch of buildings to avoid the cold weather. Along the way, we saw something interesting - architecturally.

Sheila was all "TADAAA!" and I'm like ".. this is pretty cool."

We get back to the MIT dorm, I get the Techer chat set-up. Afterwards, we watch a movie and eat our dinner... And that concludes the end of Day 3.

Day 4: Ha-ha-ha-ha-Harvard

 So - day 4. I noticed in the previous days how easy it was to get to Harvard... so I wanted to go visit Harvard and look around really - so we spent most of our day there.

And we're walking down the corridor to get to Kendall Square to go over to Harvard.

We're here! "felices ter et amplius quos inrupta tenet copula nec malis" is a phrase which I believe refers to an Opera by the name of "Horace" or something similar. Anyone wanna google this and find out?

And we're basically walking around Harvard Yard and checking out everything.

 

And so I touched John Harvard's left shoe. I'm told it's supposed to bring me good luck!

It's said that so many tourists and visitors have rubbed John Harvard's shoe that it turned gold!

And we're heading towards the Harvard Science Center. They also have their classes in here as well. After walking around a bit, about an hour later, Sheila and I get pretty hungry for a burger. She heard about this famous burger place just outside in Harvard Square that we should go to. Basically - the restaurant has served lots of famous people - and every thing on their menu represents a burger that some celebrity has requested and then got named after in their honor (according to our waitress).

So Sheila ordered a shake and I got a diet coke. I ordered the Ted Kennedy and Sheila ordered the Drew Faust (Harvard President) which was also a veggie burger. While waiting - I noticed how interesting my surroundings were...

And then we got our food!

Afterwards - we paid in cash. Funny story here: this restaurant only accepts cash (no credit or debit at all) but luckily there was an ATM machine in the back one could use to get cash. We went back on the subway and headed back to the dorm to rest up.

Day I-lost-count: Visiting LIGO

So we come upon the second reason that I decided to visit MIT for spring break - meeting professors and looking for research opportunities. Sheila went to work at Volpe Transportation while I was left to explore MIT and find where the LIGO buildings were. Along the way, I saw some other interesting research laboratories I've heard about through my problem sets in Physics... such as the Nabisco lab.

On one of my Ph101 Problem Sets (Order Of Magnitude Physics [OOM]), we had to compute the energy required to cool a certain odd-tasting magnet: Francis Bitter Magnet. Strangely enough, it's not named because of how it tastes - but after the man who came up with it. The super-awesome experiment of the magnets included levitating frogs! There's some videos on the web if you Google for them.

And these were one of the few cooling tanks found around the lab. Getting back to the whole point of my wandering around campus: finding LIGO.

LIGO was contained here - inside the Plasma Science Fusion Center building (and they spanned two buildings as well as a large underground laboratory). Because it was mostly a research lab - I am not allowed to take pictures or reveal too much about what we talked about. For those of you who don't know much about LIGO - it stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory.

Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves as part of the theory of general relativity. He described space and time as different aspects of reality in which matter and energy are ultimately the same. Space-time can be thought of as a "fabric" defined by the measuring of distances by rulers and the measuring of time by clocks. The presence of large amounts of mass or energy distorts space-time -- in essence causing the fabric to "warp" -- and we observe this as gravity. Freely falling objects -- whether a soccer ball, a satellite, or a beam of starlight -- simply follow the most direct path in this curved space-time. When large masses move suddenly, some of this space-time curvature ripples outward, spreading in much the way ripples do the surface of an agitated pond. When dense objects orbit each other, space-time is stirred by their motion, and gravitational energy ripples throughout the universe.

LIGO will detect these ripples in space-time by using a device called a laser interferometer, in which the time it takes light to travel between suspended mirrors is measured with high precision using controlled laser light. Two mirrors hang far apart, forming one "arm" of the interferometer, and two more mirrors make a second arm perpendicular to the first. Viewed from above, the two arms form an L shape. Laser light enters the arms through a beam splitter located at the corner of the L, dividing the light between the arms. The light is allowed to bounce between the mirrors repeatedly before it returns to the beam splitter. If the two arms have identical lengths, then interference between the light beams returning to the beam splitter will direct all of the light back toward the laser. But if there is any difference between the lengths of the two arms, some light will travel to where it can be recorded by a photodetector.

The space-time ripples cause the distance measured by a light beam to change as the gravitational wave passes by, and the amount of light falling on the photodetector to vary. The photodetector then produces a signal defining how the light falling on it changes over time. The laser interferometer is like a microphone that converts gravitational waves into electrical signals. Three interferometers of this kind were built for LlGO -- two near Richland, Washington, and the other near Baton Rouge. Louisiana. LlGO requires at least two widely separated detectors, operated in unison, to rule out false signals and confirm that a gravitational wave has passed through the earth.

That night, after Sheila got back - we visited Harvard Square again because there was an All-Deaf Conference for National Deaf Month at Harvard. We got there early and we were super hungry so we headed into this tavern to eat. I apologize in advance for my horribly bad memory with food names (and Sheila might be able to fill me in later). Here are pictures of foods we ate:

I believe this was a pizza with some form of sausage and brie.

These were bacon-wrapped figs.

This was kind of a play on deviled eggs.

And this was a warm coffee-style cake topped with blackberry and mint.

Afterwards - we headed over to Harvard for the talk. It was a discussion panel about (in my opinion) coping with deafness in academic settings from kindergarten to graduate school (and beyond). There were interpreters and real-time captions for everyone and it was a fantastic talk. After this, we met with Sheila's friend Amy (at Harvard) who took us to play some Super Smash Brothers Melee in one of the freshmen houses in Harvard Yard. And this concludes Day ???.

Day near-end-of-spring-break: Deaf Meet-Up

So today, Sheila also went to work as well and I basically worked on things I had to do to get ready for 3rd term at Caltech including IST4 (a class I TA) and reading ahead on the material for my Analytical Magnetostatics class. So rather than bore you with the details of my studying... let's skip ahead to Andy and Cena!

They're just like us - only 5 years older - a deaf couple. Cena (on the left) only knows sign language and she signs like a boss [respect]. Andy on the right started learning sign language a couple of years ago and has been picking up on it pretty fast. Together, along with Sheila, I've been starting to learn some sign language as well. They're both wonderful people and Andy is ridiculous :P They drove down to MIT and we traveled over to UNOs in Harvard Square where the Deaf Meet-Up would be.

We were all hungry so we went upstairs to eat first. Sheila and I ordered the UNOs Classic Pizza for two (and it was the size of a pizza for one! How unfair...) Andy never stopped complaining about it :-o We talked pretty much about everything and they all tried to teach me sign language, albeit somewhat unsuccesfully. I'm still a horrible beginner with moderate signs of improvement [get the pun?] and once I get more practice, I'll be much better in no time. I met a lot of new people at the meet and greet including Andy, Cena, West [at Harvard], Jenny [from Wellesley], Paul [from Worcester Polytech], Alan and his wife [and many others]!  I totally can't wait to come next year and try out what sign-language skills I happen to have... hrmm... I'll still suck, but not as bad as before :D

Day All-my-bags-are-packed-and-I'm-ready-to-go...

At this point - I probably glossed over a day or something here... but I feel like I've hit all the high notes and quarter notes of my spring break. As you guessed from the title of the section - I like Peter, Paul, and Mary [and John Denver]... but today was the day I left to go back to Caltech. I had a great time visiting MIT and exploring Boston, Cambridge, Harvard, and all the other places.

I'm not completely sure what I'll be doing for my next blog post - but if you have any suggestions... just let me know! I'll talk about really anything :D

Olive Harvest "Linner" and why I love Mark Wise

So... ya know... I haven't really posted in a while... but... yeah... Let's leave that for now.

Thanks for all those emails telling me how awesome my blog posts are - it's nice to know I'm not writing stuff that gets tossed into the big giant thing known as the internetz without being read. It's honestly been a relatively slow period of the term, as you've read from some other bloggers, an awkward "inbetweenness". This could be accounted for since we all just finished midterms/ getting the results of said midterms back. In my case, professors get lazy and release midterms a week later than the actual midterms week... But my midterms (two) went great - covering topics from Threshold High Energy Particle collisions, Perturbation theory, Relativistic Kinematics to Spherically Symmetric Potentials and talking about Angular Momentum and Linear Momentum measurements of electrons/bosons/pions/whatnot (Quantum Mechanically). Ahh, life of Physics majors. Speaking of Physics...

 

I'm writing this blog post on the back of finishing my first set in E&M for Ph106b (I'd imagine it's comparable to graduate level, but don't take my word for it). As you can see, I'm blatantly advertising my house - Ruddock - on the back of Jessica Davis's (astrophysics, Junior) sweatshirt. Also, we tend to get really loopy past midnight... Collaboration at Caltech is always fun since you get to socialize and learn at the same time in perfect harmony (experimentally-determined). So, lemme introduce some of the things I'll talk about in this blog post...

• Ruddock House's Formal Dinner
• Olive Harvest "Linner"
• Dinner with Mark Wise
• Jurassic Park OPI progress update

Food Stuffs

There were two main food-related stuff that I've been a part of with my house. Formal Dinner and Olive Harvest "Linner".

Formal Dinner

The first is Formal Dinner - a tradition that every house (and Avery) partake in each term. All houses have it on different days (not on the same day, and food differs always). Caltech Dining Services (CDS) prepares the food, provides the tableclothes, silverware, and centerpieces - we provide the well-groomed empty stomachs. Here's the menu for second term's Formal Dinner:

Starter: Butternut Squash soup with Creme Fraiche and Chive

Entree: Baseball Steak and Seared Scallop with Roasted Red Potatoes

Vegan/Vegetarian Entree: Eggplant and Artichoke alla Napoletana served with Mushroom and Sundried Tomato Risotto

Desset: Mascarpone Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta, Shaved Chocolate, Fresh Berries and Raspberry Coili

Vegan Desset: Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta, Shaved Chocolate, Fresh Berries and Raspberry Coili

I apologize in advance for not taking pictures of all the food before I ate it... I'm not used to taking pictures of food and then blogging about it... I think this is a good time to point out how well Caltech does with acommodations. I've mentioned it before with Housing situations - allergies and whatnot, but CDS also provides specialized meals for those of you with more particular diets as well as a separate dinner for vegan/vegetarian every weekday. In short - don't let your specific needs dictate how you choose your colleges - Caltech will help meet your needs, NO MATTER WHAT.

Back to the formal dinner - we invite guests such as: Deans, the President, faculty, professors, post-docs, grad students, and friends from the other houses. You get to dress up nice, make small talk, and mingle - overall a good night to relax and have fun in a formal fashion (aha - see the pun I made there?). Here are some pictures I did take:

Actually, really only the one picture - but the soup was delicious and looked awesome! It even had the fancy-writing "R" on it in homage to Ruddock house. On that same night, we had "Installiations" [always mispelled it by tradition] of the new House Officers including Ath Team (sports), Soc Team (social events), Librarian (has to be lazy and keep the house library clean), Treasurer (rules our monies), Secretary (types everything and handles emailing the house and so forth), Vice President (creates Alley Challenges), and President (the face of our house).

 

Also, you might be wondering why the cake is "Install-Dethrone-K-Bitz-Iation". Our ex-president is Daniel Kolodrubetz (or KBitz, Special-K, Ginger [he's red-haired]); a senior in Physics. It was a hilarious joke. Also, I think the dinosaur has something to do with our OPI being dinosaur-related, but that could just be coincidence...

Olive Harvest "Linner"

Way way back before I started blogging - first term - we had an event called "Olive Harvest" which took place on the appropriately named "Olive Walk" at Caltech. Olive Walk is a long walk starting at the Athaneum and ending just before Millikan Library that is lined with Olive trees. Every time the trees start producing a crapload of olives, instead of hiring outside landscapers to get all the olives down so they don't mess up the Olive Walk, Caltech gets all the students, grad students, and random people from the community to help collect olives. The end purpose is to make Olive Oil with these olives. In particular, all the student houses had a competition: whoever collected the most olives by weight would win $1000 for their house and a free dinner at President Chameau's house. So guess who won? Ruddock did! I have a hard time recalling but I think it was something like 800-900 pounds of olives from our houses - the next highest being around 600 pounds...

So we just had the Linner last week. We've called it a "linner" because it occured between lunch/dinner (around 3pm). So we got to the President's house which is less than a minute away from Ruddock - north of us. Here are some pictures of the event:

Here's a picture of President Chameau talking with Rebecca Wernis (S'more, Physics) about how to play Petanque (a french game). The goal of the game was to start with a yellow ball - throw it to determine where you toss the metal balls next. The person who gets closest to the yellow ball (no restrictions about hitting it or other players' balls) wins. Here's the game in action...

Yellow ball's been thrown.

And you start throwing metal balls... It's a hard game, seriously. Even making the metal balls super-heavy, they've still got some bounce to 'em. Here's a snapshot of the rules if any of you are interested in playing as well (we played with "official Caltech" equipment - Caltech branded and all).

After this short activity to distract us while the food was cooking - the food finished cooking! Here's some scenic pictures while I go find the list of food we ate...

 

So, here's what we ate (can you identify the theme?)

• Greek Salad
• Israeli Style Couscous
• Roasted Eggplant with Tomato Confit
• Lemon Oregano Chicken
• Herbed Flat Iron Steak

Here's what all (most) of it looked on a half-eaten plate (my apologies again).

And for dessert, we had a French Vanilla Ice Cream, Peach Pie with Blueberries and Strawberries.. (I think, wasn't sure about the pie)...

Mark Wise and the Asian "Family" Dinner

When I say "Iron Man", "High Energy Particles", and "Nuclear Physics" - what do they have in common? Tony Stark (hey, he's got my last name.. he's totally related to me.. I swear.. true story) and Mark Wise. Out of these two, Professor Wise is an actual person. Let's talk about his Iron Man affiliation first:

Jeremy Latcham, Senior Vice President of Production at Marvel Studios and Co-producer for Iron Man 2, knew just who to call -- the Science and Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences that connects experts in entertainment with experts in science and engineering."Scientists can offer more than just simple fact-checking of scripts," said Jennifer Ouellette, director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. "Get them involved early enough in the production process and their input can be invaluable in developing not just the fundamental scientific concepts underlying a scene, but also -- since film and TV are a visual mediums -- scientists can help filmmakers more fully realize their visions on screen."

"I went to Marvel Studios to meet with one of the film’s producers (Latcham) and even brought a graduate student along," said Mark Wise, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who served as a technical consultant for the film. "There was a specific set of scenes that I was consulting on; the story had to get from this point to that point." Wise was surprised by Latcham’s and the film crew’s interest in the actual science, "I attempted to present the science in a way to the help the movie, but still get a little science in," said Wise. "They wanted the scenes to look good, but they also wanted elements of truth in what they did, it was nice." During a round-table discussion with Latcham and a few members of the film's crew, Wise revealed some insider information."They wanted to use the science to show what it (a particle accelerator) would really look like and they also wanted to do it in a way that was entertaining," said Wise. "They even wanted to know the behind-the-scenes stuff -- stuff that you wouldn’t see." During a follow-up visit to Marvel, Wise met with Latcham and the film's crew while they were building the set in Tony Stark's lab. Wise also had a chance to meet with the film’s director, Jon Favreau, and view the set of scenes that he consulted on after they had been filmed.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/05/science-iron-man-movie/#ixzz1EUDuHu5a

 You can also read the Caltech Today's article about it: http://features.caltech.edu/features/24.

Mark Wise is my professor for Quantum Mechanics (Ph125abc - all three terms) and is generally known for his quirky sense of humor, being overly self-confident, and giving away money when you answer his questions. Yes, every class, he always has money to give away for answering his questions... he's just that awesome. As for the quotes, we've been compiling a list of his quotes for this year on a twitter account: http://twitter.com/MarkWiseSays. Just recently, he decided to take the whole class out to dinner to "give us some pleasure after experiencing pain [on the midterm exam he gave us]". So he took us to this family-style Asian restaurant in Pasadena called "Panda Inn". I have to admit, the food was SUPER DELICIOUS (and there was so much, even with 30 people).

There he is, surrounded by Physics students.

There were grad students, his TAs, and lots of undergrads there to enjoy the night with him. The table in the back was also part of it (albeit not obvious). He basically ordered everything on the menu (and paid for it!) and we got to enjoy his company, jokes, and just relax after midterms.

This is about 1/4 of the total food that had come out - the beginning of a tidal wave of food.. We were all definitely hungry!

And this is my plate, which consists of dishes like Beef and Broccoli, Baised String Beans, Ginger Sesame Asparagus, Honey Walnut Shrimp, Orange Chicken, Tea-Smoked Duck, and many others which I've failed to recall. And yes, I'm using chopsticks (until I get frustrated and fall back to using my fork like the American I am). This (and many more) is a reason why I love Mark Wise.

Jurassic Park OPI Update

So, over the past few weeks - we've experienced some rain to the point in which we had to take a day off because we can't work when it's wet. Apparently, electricity and water just don't mix reasonably... Who knew? Up to this point, we've finished the 16-foot gate supports and will proceed to cover them with OSB, wallboards, and add on the humongous doors as well. We've also got a painted T-rex ready to be mounted over our dance floor. We've finished bracing up a majority of our elevated platforms and just started adding railings around the sides of them, and we also started work on the ground pieces for the fake electric fence. Here's a photo montage to enjoy...

Here's a picture of the T-rex in front of the 16-foot gate pieces (for comparison).

The gates are pretty much the same height as our two-story house!

A perspective picture of the elevated platforms sans braces at the end closest to the camera (we added them on after the picture was taken). From this angle, there's over 20 feet of elevated walkway! You can also see the octagonal pieces we built for the birdcages.

Here's another view of the birdcage pieces just to give you a better sense of how they look.

Here's a picture of Steve leaning on the railings to show just how sturdy they are already!

As you can see from the two pictures, we've been adding on more and more railings. Franz is simply checking out how sturdy they are after adding railing around the first birdcage piece.

Here's a picture from the elevated platforms of how everything looks.. and it looks legen-wait for it-dary! Meanwhile, Art has been busy doing what they do best...

Painting. So, remember that white-plastered T-rex there were a lot of pictures of previously? They had to make it look like this... (from the movie):

And this was the result:

It's pretty darn impressive. Also, that's Franz getting swallowed whole by the t-rex of my nightmares... Yeah.

 The week after that - Art had finished up all the doors and pieces for the gate so it was on us (construction) to get those pieces up. So... we first went to go pick up some scaffolding from one of the other houses on campus who used it last for Big Interhouse. Then we went to work:

Here, Carly Bond and Franz are putting up a horizontal 2x4 that'll hold the Jurassic Park sign.

Then Alex Wein and Franz started putting up the walls of the gate while I worked on the doors (that would go inside the gate). But first - we needed a lunch break after working hard (or hardly working...)

So Soc Team got us free food from In-n-Out which was pretty good. Then we went back to work.

Here's a picture of what we're doing in the back of the gate - building on the doors. You can see the painted doors on the left leaning against our birdcage platform. And here's the almost-finalized result we have:

Pretty cool eh? For those of you nearby in the SoCal region (that means you Techers and Admission people who like to read the blogs), you should stop by, visit me in Ruddock 216, and check out the party (it's on March 5th, but if you wanna see it during the day, stop by beforehand or after the party before the term ends).

Here is another nearly finalized picture of the gates - with the doors we just finished!

Compare it to the picture from the movie...

Pretty close huh? Join me next time (most likely next week) as I talk about: 

• Undetermined Caltech-related academic stuff
• Max Martin and why he's awesome at rocking my life
• Selected Topic in Physics for discussion (something that I've done some laboratory research for)
• Suggestions? Questions?

Hope you all had a GREAT Valentine's Day and enjoy the three-day weekend! I know I will.

Stephen Hawking, Slingshotting Satellites, RankManiac 2011, and more!

Mighty, patient readers of this fine blog - I apologize for having a short delay in the next blog post. In fact, there was so much that had happened within the past two weeks that it was hard to do anything else other than live out my life until I got a break! As you can tell from the title of the blog - my life at Caltech is anything BUT ordinary. There's really no way any of these topics connect with each other at all - but that's what makes Caltech great. The variety of opportunities to learn, educate, and socialize given the small community is impressive. Whenever you're here, you always find yourself diversifying your knowledge and experience... So what first? Stephen Hawking.

PS: Why not visit RankManiac 2011 today?

Stephen Hawking

Many of you have...

• heard of him
• seen him in person
• gone to his lecture
• sang him "Happy Birthday"

Wait, what? Yes, let me say that again - sang him "Happy Birthday". Let's start with this... Have I seen him in person?

Roger, Houston. Have I sung Happy Birthday to him?

 

Affirmative. In fact, this happened on January 8th, 2011 (he turned 69!) So, a group of Caltech students organized an event in which we met in front of his house just off the West end of campus. He seemed to enjoy it a lot - it's usually hard to judge but we were told that he loved the surprise and that it was one of the many reasons he enjoys visiting Caltech. Yes, Stephen Hawking said he loves us. :-D

Anyhow... in the next week or so (I think it was 1.5 weeks after that) - he held two separate lecture events at Beckman Auditorium: linky (Why not visit RankManiac 2011 today?). The lecture was titled "My Brief History" and it basically chronicled the life of his parents up to his birth, then his life up to the present - putting focus on how he was raised and why he chose to go into Astrophysics-Astronomy area.

As you can see, the whole audience was packed full of my fellow undergraduate peers, graduate students, and post-docs - all anxious and waiting for the lecture to begin. But.. before that could happen, Kip Thorne came up to make a formal round of introductions and provide a little background into his relationship with Stephen Hawking - I'm sure he cracked a joke or two but I might've missed them.

That's Kip Thorne on the left, Hawking on the right. So, I just happened to get the front row seat on the middle-right side of the auditorium which kind of blocked his face from us. I think the only people who were able to see him completely were those on the left side of the auditorium, but just being there was a fantastic experience in and of itself. The lecture lasted roughly an hour and 30 minutes with a question/answer session at the end (3 people's questions were selected to be 'presented' and a pre-prepared answer was given by Stephen Hawking). All in all - Stephen Hawking is a brilliant mind, so the final picture I'll give for this section...

Go check out RankManiac 2011 while you're at it! And the next thing to talk about is...

RankManiac 2011

So it seems like you've seen the (RankManiac 2011) link scattered throughout the blog post right? So, there's this CS144 competition which is to literally spam 'RankManiac 2011' in an effort to get your particular website at the top of the Google rankings for that term. Obviously, you can find my website here: RankManiac 2011. This is being hosted on the UGCS cluster and it is 100% free and you get it forever (one of the benefits of enjoying life at the Math and Science playground of the nation). I can't really explain the competition any better than the problem set - here's the problem set from Adam Wierman's CS144 "Ideas Behind the Web" class: linky. As you can see, the class competition boils down to getting the highest ranking on both Google and Bing compared to: TAs, other classmates, competition pages from previous years. As you can tell, it's a LOT of work. If you would like to support me, just post the link anywhere - blogs, facebook, twitter, digg, reddit... And if you have the option to choose the title text, it helps to make it "RankManiac 2011" like I've done in this blog (for maximal linkability).

One of the things we just happened to do with RankManiac 2011 was post the introduction of Ruddock House Video (for rotation 2010-2011) which was a spoof on the Fresh Prince of Belair linky. Something happened with that video that we didn't expect to happen. It got over 10,000 views within the first 24 hours after posting it on BuzzFeed for RankManiac 2011! If you check out my RankManiac 2011 website, you can see a picture of the graph as it was starting to go viral. The current graph is much bigger now.

I'll try to post further updates as we get later in the competition up until when it ends in the middle of February. Check out the RankManiac 2011 site for some pictures (under Day 3).

Double Pendulum

So, last Thursday in my Physics class, the professor talked about the double pendulum! He actually did a demonstration of it. What makes the physics of this type of situation interesting is, when analyzing using Lagrangian mechanics and making plots of the various total energies introduced to the system, one finds that the pendulum exhibits rich dynamical behavior that is completely predictable. For other energies, the pendulum is completely chaotic. So check out these videos. The first two show double pendulum motion when the angles are equal and when the angles are opposite (but with energy that gives predictable motion):

 

 

And this last video shows chaotic motion when the double pendulum starts off with a lot of energy (a specific range of energy which gives it unpredictable behavior).

 

Slingshotting Satellites

This week (last week, this week, and next week) - my Physics Computational Laboratory is all about modeling the path of the Voyager spacecraft's Grand Tour. There have been seven spacecraft sent to explore one or more of the outer planets: the two Pioneers, the two Voyagers, Ulysses, Galileo, and (most recently) Cassini. Among these, Voyager has gained a special place in the hearts of many enthusiasts of space exploration. It was launched on August 20, 1977, and it visited Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus on its way through the solar system out to Neptune. The encounters with these four planets were carefully planned. Each planet was used to provide a gravitational assist for the spacecraft, setting it on course to the next planet on a route. In a gravitational assist, a spacecraft passes close to a planet; in the course of the encounter, the planet transfers momentum to the spacecraft, allowing a boost to higher velocities (with respect to the Sun). You might guess that the planets must be aligned in a very specific way to make this possible, and indeed such a felicitous alignment did take place in 1977 (the subsequent alignment, in 1997, was exploited by the Cassini mission). Taking advantage of the planetary positions, Voyager was able to make a Grand Tour of the outer solar system.

This is a plot of the Voyager trajectory (based on theoretical estimations) using the Van Allen paper (read it online: paper). The paper is a pretty short read, but it's full of great ideas in Physics and explores the "apparent paradox" when you do a thought-experiment about the slingshotting of satellites/spacecraft using planets.

PS: Have you checked out my website RankManiac 2011 yet? Do it!

In the first week of this lab, we had to design an adaptive runge-kutta scheme. A runge-kutta scheme is a series of mathematical integrations (without actually integrating, but using the derivative / slope and evaluating it at points - think Riemman Sums) to compute the value of a function over various time steps which we allow our program to run. Runge-Kutta comes in various orders such as a first-order Runge-Kutta (also known as the Explicit Euler). In this lab, we're dealing with a 4th order runge-kutta but the issue becomes an NP problem as the time required to: compute orbits of multiple planets, motion of satellites based on gravitational effects over a constant time step; increases exponentially. While a higher-order Runge-Kutta is better (because we can get approximately closer to the true value of our integration), it comes with a time cost. So the adaptive runge-kutta aims to fix this by taking a fixed 'accuracy' which we like to see our equations evaluated within. It computes the accuracy that our equations and determines whether the accuracy is sufficiently high (so it increases the time step, it knows the accuracy is good enough so it goes further out in time) or whether the accuracy is ridiculously low (so it decreases the time step to evaluate the function at more points in a low accuracy section of the orbit - maybe when the orbit is changing directions or something awesome and cool is going on at that particular time area). By implementing it, we are able to evaluate the voyager's path. Here are some pictures of slingshotting voyager past Jupiter in this week's lab - a confirmation that we were able to (a) program the adaptive runge-kutta scheme and (b) get the variables inputted accordingly. Next week, I'll post pictures of the orbit of the solar system as well as the path of the voyager as it goes on the Grand Tour.

Here is the digital orrery - a numerically-approximate plot of the planet trajectories which were created using a Newton-Raphson method to estimate the position of a planet given the period and other physical characteristics.

Quick Update on Ruddock OPI: Jurassic Park

So, this past weekend - it's rained a tiny bit (more like a shower), but any amount of rain we experience basically requires that we shut down construction until it dries up again. Therefore, construction did not get as much done as we would have liked - but art did a LOT. Remember that crappy-looking T-rex/Alligator/Creature from a B-rated Sci-fi movie? Our very own Rebecca Lawler (she makes a comic for the Caltech newspaper) worked and labored on the t-rex until it started looking like something from my nightmares...

You have to admit - that is one mighty, fierce T-rex right there... That's pretty much a short summary of my life in these past two weeks... Join me next time! PS: RankManiac 2011 has everything you ever wanted and more! Go spread it around!

Dinosaurs, Curiosity, and Mandelbrot

Mighty readers of this awesome blog post, it is the second week of school! In other words, we have about 8 more weeks before this term ends. If you've never been on a quarter system, you'll enjoy all the benefits and punishments that come along with it when you come to Caltech. Some of the true benefits include being able to learn from a variety of professors on diverse subjects in short time periods (akin to the idea behind TED talks) as well as only have 10 weeks for a class you decide wasn't as interesting as it sounded. The obvious disadvantage is that you only have 10 weeks for a class you absolutely love (but that doesn't stop you from taking it time and time again by auditing it) and 1.5 times as many Midterm and Final exams as most other colleges. But in the case of Caltech, I'm positive that the 'pros' far outweigh the 'cons'.

In this week's blog post, I'll be talking a lot about Ruddock OPI, a little bit about my Physics computational lab, and a little bit about TEDxCaltech [sadly, I wasn't able to go as I had a lab that day... but I'll provide links and awesome insight about it].

In chronological order, I'll start with my lab. This week's lab was to generate the Mandelbrot set using the equation Z(n+1) = Z(n)^2 + Z(0) where the 'escape count' of a point Z(0) is the number of iterations before Z(n+1) had a magnitude larger than 2 [ |Z(n+1)|>2]. Mathematically, it's a pretty sound concept, not too hard to program in C++. The next part was to generate a matrix of numbers for which I would compute the escape counts of - using this matrix, I could loop through and create a matrix of escape counts. From this matrix of escape counts, I would assign a color value depending on how large the escape count is. Then, I would use an opensource plotting program [g2; http://g2.sourceforge.net/g2_ref/index.html] to generate a plot from the matrix of colors. The final part of the script was to have a variable resolution so I could make the plot bigger or smaller. To this part, I tried to compute a 100,000 pixel by 100,000 pixel resolution image of the Mandelbrot set - the video below is the result:

 

As you notice in the video, I was only able to drag it left or right, if I had clicked anywhere else in the image, I would have executed a series of event listeners programmed to change the center of the image to where you clicked it or to zoom in/out. Finally, to finish this lab up, we simply had to calculate the area of the Mandelbrot set using the Pixel Counting method. This accounts to basically determining the number of pixels that don't escape (the black area in the image) and comparing it to the number of pixels that escaped (the colorful area of the image). Using some small images (300px by 300px up to 1000px by 1000px), I determined the area to be 1.607 +- 0.1. The best estimation is around 1.5, so I wasn't too far off. [More details on the pixel counting method can be found here: http://mrob.com/pub/muency/pixelcounting.html]. If you're interested in how it works with C++, you can post a comment and ask whatever questions you want.

 

 TEDxCaltech!

 

TEDxCaltech was an independently organized TED talk that took place at Caltech on January 14th, 2011. There's really not much I can say about it that would be better than reading it from the source... so go there: http://tedxcaltech.com/! Some of the speakers included Pamela Björkman (amazing work with HIV), Shuki Bruck (a ridiculously awesome professor that I had for Information Systems and Technology class), John Preskill (my Quantum Mechanics professor last year - he absolutely loves Qubits), and current Caltech students like Jordan Theriot (she's in the class of 2012, my year!).

Also, Richard Feynman is THE man. Go read his lectures or something, get inspired in the world of Physics, Quantum Computation, and intellectual curiosity. 'Nuff said.

 

The next/last big event of the week is Ruddock OPI: Day 0. (the computer scientist within me likes to start all numbers at 0 for simplicity). OPI is a pretty big deal at any house in Caltech. OPI stands for 'Our Private Interhouse'. Every year, each house picks a date and hosts a party for the entire campus. And during the term, we build and put the party together for that date. When I mean build, that does include getting music, food, t-shirts, flyers, propaganda.. but we're also BUILDING. Physically building a dance floor, building a theme to the party, painting the walls, stairs, elevated platforms, all that stuff. It's a pretty monumental task. So the way it works - we have Grand Dragons for the party: the leaders. This year, Ruddock's grand dragons are Shamili Allam, Franz Sauer, and Me! Under the grand dragons, we delegate tasks to 'focus groups' in Construction, Art, Lighting, Music, Finance, etcetera. The people who are in charge of each separate section are called Iguanas and their job is to obey our every command and encourage lazy people to come help us build the party. For the remainder of this term, most of my talking about OPI will be focused on the Construction side, as that is my main area of expertise.

This year's theme is Jurassic Park - we'll be taking ideas and situations from Jurassic Park 1,2, and 3. But first, have a look see at our plans...

This is a floor plan of the layout as viewed in a normal North-South layout. The significant features you can see here are the large numbers of dance platforms we're building (8ft by 4ft), the two bird cages on the right, and the gate in the bottom right corner.

 

This is a 3D view from the North-West corner of the party. As you can see, there is a series of elevated platforms around the party with a ramp connecting the bottom dance floor to the top. The gate is prominent in the top-right, a jeep on the right (the big light-green building is the wood shed, we keep all of our wood in there). On top of this wood shed, Andrew Gong (a Rudd) mounted a camera to take pictures constantly to create a timelapse video - more on this later. Finally you can see the electric fence that we plan to build (don't worry, it's a fake one! Caltech would never let us build a real one....)

We have some surprises planned in store that you can't see from these images. For example, we're planning on getting plexiglass so we can create a waterfall from the roof over the elevated platform so you can walk under a waterfall at the party! We're also building a couple of dinosaurs, including a T-Rex which will have broken through the fake electric fence and perhaps a fake bathroom stall (like in Jurassic Park 1). Most of these details are still in the mix and will be further solidifed and agreed upon as we get closer to the date of the party.

 So "what's a timelapse?" you might ask. Well, I'm glad you asked! It's a series of pictures taken at fixed intervals for the duration of an event and then put together to create a still-picture movie. Last year's Steampunk OPI was also 'timelapsed' by Andrew as well:

 

Over the course of 9 weeks, this whole party was built - you can also observe how fast clouds move, how rain .. rains, and how things seem to just 'pop-up' out of nowhere if accelerated fast enough. So without further ado (or many more words), here's a photo montage of the first two days of construction!

2.5 hours into Day 0 + a nail gun + Franz, myself, and Eduard Pursifull (iguana), we built three level elevated platforms!

Meanwhile, a team spearheaded by Iguanas Jason Bland and Brianne Blakesley built the dance platforms we would soon need for Day 1, using $1,300 worth of wood we bought and had delivered from Home Depot!

All the while, Matt Fu (coerced by Art Iguana Rebecca Lawler) was building the frame for the T-Rex that would soon break through our fake electric fence, come party time.

At the end of Day 0, we had finished cross-bracing (North-South) 4ft by 4ft supports to each other for the elevated platforms and finished double-checking the levels. So.. we decided to do some practical testing...

Note: only attempt this under supervised conditions with Franz Sauer. Meh, he didn't want to smile for me... but he thought that it felt pretty stable... wait until we had finished cross-bracing it the next day - it would soon be super-duper-mega-stable [if you looked up the definition of super-duper-mega in the dictionary, it would provide you with the image above! True story.]

So it's Day 1 and we just had our lunch and went back to work on the dance platforms. Here is our progress in building the dance floor! The only girl here is our Construction Iguana, Brianne Blakesley. From left to right, we have the Iguanas Jason Bland (math major extraordinaire; he's a Putnam Fellow, go look him up!), Eduard Pursifull (a frosh, orange shirt), and Jeff Sherman (a frosh, in the non-orange shirt). And then there's Franz Sauer, a Grand Dragon, on the far right. We're all (except for me taking pictures) diligently working on the dance platforms [22 total on the ground, 8 total elevated].

Here's a view of the whole place so far. There's some new people in this picture - the guy in the bright-white shirt in the back is Nathan Baskin, an art iguana; to the left of him in the dark-green shirt is Shamili Allam, a Grand Dragon (expertise in art). All the way in the front with the green shorts is Lisa Lee (a frosh). As you can see, Franz is at it again dancing around on the elevated platforms double checking the height measurements to the roof. This time, we braced the supports in the East-West direction so it is completely super-duper-mega-stable. Seriously, I ran at it from the side at full speed, hitting it, and it didn't even budge AN INCH.

And here is a final view from the East side of our courtyard to give you a sense of how high these platforms are - 7 feet off the ground. This is quite honestly one of the highest dance platforms built for interhouse that anyone can think of in a while... and we're all ecstatic to be ahead of schedule (working fast) and having level, stable platforms (a must for safety reasons). Coming this Tuesday, we have a contractor-guy (through Caltech) who will come inspect everything that we've done and give us suggestions for improvement / words of advice. Here at Caltech, we take our parties and safety seriously.
As a little joke (a homage to Simpsons I'd imagine), we have the 'Days without Injury' sign. In most cases, the injury is usually a small wood splinter... I'll try and get a less-blurry picture next time (I blame iPhone). Finally, because images don't provide a lot of depth into what's actually happening real-time, I took a super-short video to show you how construction goes throughout the day:

 

Join me next time when I'll talk about all things related to Stephen Hawking, including singing him 'Happy Birthday' in person! Meanwhile, Construction will still be going on - I'll update you about that, and we'll have more events at Caltech to blog about in the meantime. As always, if you have any questions or you want me to talk about something within the blog, just post a comment!

Winter Break in Sunny Florida (part 2 of 2)

 

As promised, part 2 of 2 of my THREE WEEK winter vacation. By becoming a member of the Caltech Community, you're endowed with all sorts of privileges... meeting Nobel Laureates, excessively long breaks in between terms, no sleep, and delicious food 24/7. Honestly, it's a paradise for nerds, geeks, and quirky people.... If you're the kind of person who wants to test the water with your foot before cannon-balling in, why not come for a Caltech Tour, Caltech-In-A-Day, or Prefrosh Weekend? These events will immerse you in the culture of Caltech in a short period of time, and I highly recommend doing... ALL OF THEM.

Getting back to my winter vacation. As you know, we went to Disney the first week I was back... The next day, I was completely tuckered out, so I'm pretty sure I spent all day in bed with my laptop watching Roseanne reruns. At some points during the vacation, Sheila, my Mom, and my Sister went shopping in the malls near us.. they love to shop. I prefer going to a technology store (like Brookstone) and just playing with and touching everything like a kid in a candy shop. There's two more highlights: the family fishing trip and my anniversary dinner.

So it's Florida.. I'm from Florida.. my whole Family's from Florida (minus my Dad, who was actually born in Long Island, New York...). We all love fishing, especially my Dad, my older brother, and I. It's usually a tradition everytime I come back to Florida from Caltech that my brother and I get on a boat, go out to the ocean, and go fishing for nice ol' big fish that we can eat... varying from Red, Mangrove, Brown Snappers; to Yellowtails, Bass, Tuna, Bluefin, King Fish, and lots and lots of Bonitas (which are horrible fish that we can't eat, but show up like 40% of the time). However, this past vacation, we couldn't go out on the ocean because of the cold fronts that came down from Canada... But, my Mom, my Dad, my 2 younger brothers, my girlfriend, and I went on a boat that we rented for the day. We started in Jupiter, Florida about a mile north of the Jupiter Lighthouse. As you can see, it's a beautiful day for fishing...

Here's Dad driving the boat...

My younger brother, Aron, relaxing...

My younger-er brother, Harrison, who apparently felt cold... (it was pretty windy)

And the back of Mom, who's also relaxing, like Aron..

And me and Sheila..

So just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.. That started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship. The father was a mighty sailing man, the family was brave and sure. Six passengers set sail that day for an all-day tour.... Speaking of which, we started fishing...

And within minutes, I had caught the first fish:

I don't remember what fish it was.. sorry guys. Sheila had caught another one of these...

Where was I? Oh that's right, fishes we caught.If you feel like "I've seen one fish, I've seen them mall", continue down past the next few pictures to the other highlight of my Winter Break vacation....

Then all of a sudden, I caught one of the biggest fish of the day... Lucky me.

And then, one of the last fish we caught was strange-looking. It was pretty hard to identify, but it turns out it was a LizardFish.

And that, my friends, concludes the end of a glorious one-day fishing trip...

My One-Year Anniversary

Here's a picture of us before we leave for the night.

Technically, it's more like the 'day-before-our-one-year-anniversary' anniversary. Long story short, most places close early on New Years' Eve. So, I took her to one of Palm Beach Gardens most exquisite restaurants - Cafe Chardonnay. It's this little place hidden inside a shopping plaza just north of my house with the most amazing (tiny) pieces of food.

We're sitting down and pretty much excited about the night that I've got planned out. The appetizers come out and it's kind of a "Chef's Sampler" of what he has to offer us... it's really quite delicious.

The top-right: Jumbo Lump Crab Cake with mango, hearts of palm and local heirloom tomato slaw.

The top-left: A shrimp dish that was specially prepared by the Chef for that night.

The bottom-left: Sauteed Foie Gras, Apple Tarte Tatin with walnut carrot bread, duck confit, berry compote and port wine glaze.

The bottom-right:I believe it is a Wild Mushroom Strudel of Crisp Filo filled with an assortment of Sautéed Woodland Mushrooms and Fontina Fondue.

The entree was a pan-roasted Veal Chop with organic mushroom risotto, asparagus and a demi glace.

And the scrumptious dessert was a cheesecake with lightly whipped cream and a dark chocolate sauce.

And that was the end to a wonderful meal at Cafe Chardonnay. After the dinner, we spent some time walking around 'Downtown at the Gardens' which is the downtown area for Palm Beach Gardens. They had lots of great Christmas lights to look out, and the winter weather of Florida was pretty much perfect at a cool 65 degrees for walking around at night. So, enjoy a photo montage of the rest of the night

 

And that was the end to a fabulous winter break with Sheila and my Family. Join me next time as I blog about Stephen Hawking, TEDxCaltech (http://tedxcaltech.com/), Mandelbrot Sets, and Ruddock OPI! Until next time, TTFN.

Winter Break in Sunny Florida (part 1 of 2)

Hi future fans of my blog, welcome! I'm currently a Junior Physicist at Caltech - a school you've applied to, or are interested in applying to. This blog and all others that you see will give you insight into the close-knit Caltech community and the life of Techers when they're not busy studying, doing problem sets, or sleeping (which we absolutely treasure). Actually, this is my first time blogging about anything, next to Facebook status updates, so it's going to be a new experience for me as well. Bear with me as I get adjusted to this! So, a little bit about me... I'm born and raised in Florida, across the country. In my free time, I enjoy playing StarCraft 2, web programming (PHP, HTML5, etcetera), playing tennis, and watching TV shows on Hulu. I'm also deaf, and according to Caltech lore, the last deaf person to attend Caltech was 20 years past - so if you have any questions about Caltech accommodations for special needs, let me know. I can guarantee you that Caltech is top-notch in this area. If you have any other questions, just post a comment.

I'm thinking of starting this first blog post off as a big huge post about my winter vacation in Florida. I'll go back to a normal blogging schedule at the end of the week, as soon as all the hustle and bustle of first-week-of-school-antics has settled down a bit. Right before winter break started, I accepted the job of being in charge of the Caltech Class of 2015 Facebook group. If you were admitted early and have yet to join the group, do so! It's a great way to get in touch with all your potential classmates at Caltech next school year. I'm also in charge of planning Ruddock's Jurassic Park OPI (our house's annual themed party; OPI stands for Our Private Interhouse) along with Shamili Allam (senior) and Franz Sauer (junior). The party is going to be a week or so before Winter Term finals (think late February-early March); more on this later.

Winter Break! It's that amazingly pleasant time of the year which I get to go home, have fun, and recuperate from studying/taking finals. In the first week, part of my family decided to go to Disney World. So me, my girlfriend Sheila, my Mom, my brother Harrison took the 2-ish hour drive up north to go to Disney! We visited three parks that day: Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, and EPCOT (Do you know what EPCOT stands for? Don't google it! I'll tell you the answer at the end of this blog post.). If you've never been to Disney World, you might not be completely surprised at our ability to visit 3 parks in one day... but let me tell you, these parks are HUGE. So, what better way to highlight the trip than by a picture show?

The first thing we did when we got in Animal Kingdom, was go straight to the back and get on the Safari ride. As we're walking there, we pass by the center of the park, which contains the amazing, man-made Tree of Life.

If you zoom in on it enough, you can note all the intricate carvings of animals in the actual tree.

I found it ridiculously amazing how much work went into this. Everything about the Tree of Life is 100% fake, but it looks 100% real. So, we reached the Safari and got on the jeep.

This is Sonya, our guide/driver for the trip. It was a beautiful, cold morning. I totally begged her not to drive freakishly fast, but she ignored me and I felt the cold sting of the wind. During the African Safari, we saw a lot of animals, such as Zebras, Gazelles, Lions, and Hippos; just to name a few.

We didn't really get to see any elephants as it was apparently too cold for them... makes sense. At one point, we even went on a chase after some poachers who were stealing elephants for their ivory tusks! (Warning: picture slightly blurry. It was seriously bumpy.)

Afterwards, we left the safari and headed straight towards the biggest man-made mountain in Florida (which so happens to be located inside Animal Kingdom) - our very own mini-Mt. Everest. We saw a Disney employee striking a pose along the way - nearly missed her as she was completely camouflaged...

Pretty cool huh? Shortly after that, we saw the brilliance of mini-Mt. Everest from a distance...

Trust me here, that is not a painting of a mountain or a facade of one, it's the real-fake deal. It hosts the ride, Expedition Everest, which is basically a roller coaster that goes forwards and backwards trying to escape the wrath of the Yeti. Afterwards, we took a break, had an early lunch, went on a couple more rides and then went park-hopping over to Magic Kingdom for the second park of the day! To get to Magic Kingdom, we took the Express Monorail to the Grand Floridian, and stopped by the gingerbread house to check it out.

The sign at the bottom left basically reads that the Gingerbread House is made of: 1,050 pounds of honey, 140 pints of egg whites, 600 pounds of powdered sugar, 700 pounds of chocolate, 800 pounds of flour, 35 pounds of spices, tons of creativity, Disney magic, and pixie dust. So, back to the Monorail...

 
That's the Grand Floridian. Fun Fact: In California, there's a hotel just like this.. guess what it's called. The Grand Californian. This is one of the three main resorts that surround Disney's Magic Kingdom. There's Grand Floridian, Polynesian, and...

... the famous Contemporary resort (a giant triangle-like building) which you can see in the background. It's a pretty great view as the Monorail keeps humming along towards Magic Kingdom (which is directly to the left of this picture). As we walk into Magic Kingdom, we can clearly see that Main Street is certainly ready for Christmas festivities!

And we're walking along Main Street towards the castle, which is pretty big and fancy and awesome-looking... I've never gotten tired of staring at it. I wouldn't mind being Princess for a Day just to sleep in the one bedroom inside the castle.

 
So, we turn right from the castle and head towards Tomorrowland (which is, honestly, my favorite section of the park). For those of you who want to stalk me, my favorite ride of all time is "It's a Small World", seriously.

To highlight some of the rides within this area - there's Space Mountain, Carousel of Progress, Blue Line, the Motocross Expressway, and many others. The Blue Line is a train that kind of goes around all of Tomorrowland (think of it like a tour, but 2 stories up). In the picture above, you can see the tracks that follow directly under the blue roof. We went on the Expressway, which is like Go-Karts, and I let my girlfriend drive...

It was fun, exciting, and somewhat slow (I daresay we never broke the 15mph speed barrier). Right after that, we headed over to Mickey's Philharmagic. Then, we tried to go to my favorite ride, "It's a Small World" but the ride apparently closed down right after we got there.

You guessed it, it was 3:30pm! Oh, before I forget... I am required by Decree 13, Clause A, Subsection 29 of the Order of the Knights of the Round Table to display the following picture...

Anyway, legal business aside... we spent a bit more time in Magic Kingdom, went on more rides, and had lots of fun. On the way to the train station (inside Magic Kingdom, to take us to the front gate), we walked by Splash Mountain...

I can't imagine anyone who wants to go on a ride that soaks you in 40 degree water for 5 minutes... unless you know, it was a Triple Dog Dare. Like Ralphie says (from "A Christmas Story"), it's the dare of dares! And so concludes our adventures of Magic Kingdom, for now.... up next:

EPCOT! Did you figure out what it stood for yet? If you haven't, keep reading... I'll tell you at the end of this blog post. We didn't go on that many rides at EPCOT, it was about 6:30pm and the park closes at 8pm. To feature some of the rides we did go on: Spaceship Earth, Test Track, Soarin'. Spaceship Earth is probably one of my favorite rides as it takes place inside that big ball you see up there.

Test Track was great, but I wouldn't drive at 70mph in a car with no top in 40 degree weather... you can really feel the cold... really. After we went on the ride, we saw some really awesome 'cars of the future' like this one:

And that, my friends and fans, concludes an amazing Disney trip brought to you by the letter D and the number 6. While we spent a day at Disney, we had enough excitement to last in memories for years to come. I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and a great New Years. Its time for those of us at Caltech to get back to work and for you to enjoy your Senior year of high school!

For those of you wondering... EPCOT stands for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow".

 

In the next blog post (part 2), I'll cover a little bit more about my winter vacation. Next week, I'll have more current events to discuss such as Stephen Hawking coming to Caltech, my attempt at programming Mandelbrot sets in C++, and building Ruddock House's Jurassic Park OPI.