ASIMO!

It really is nice to attend a university that gives me so many opportunities to find wonderful things. Today I went to see just such an amazing thing, accompanied by my girlfriend, a wonderful person whom I met at that place, the U of M. ASIMO, the Advanced Step in Innovative MObility, showed us its stuff, with the help of a bunch of remote support, of course. It walked in an arc, backwards, and up stairs, kicked a soccer ball, and put on a thoroughly impressive show. My girlfriend, who often accuses me of being too much of a geek, admitted that she was impressed. She was, however, a little disconcerted to see the huge crowd of people going ga-ga over something such as this. I can understand how one might come to think this a bit odd, or even worrisome, based on all of the movies we've been shown about robots and AI's turning against humans. I too can become pensive regarding the direction our technology is taking us. As an engineering student, I can see more of the possibilities. As someone who has observed and investigated psychology and spirituality, I know that it will work out for the best. Changes happen fast, but not so fast that we can't adapt to them. When I saw all of the bright eyes of the children who were at the show, it made me realize that there is always hope for a brighter future than the ones shown in movies. I will be one who helps move towards that.

Biconic

This rendering depicts the pressure distripution on a certain biconic body at an angle of attack. There is a new animation on my webpage that depicts what happens as the angle of attack is varied. You can also find an explanation there about how and why I made this.

3D - Welten

Yeah, that's my image in the background. Be sure to check out my raytracing stills gallery to see if you can find it.

Favorable Comparison

It's cool to be compared to the likes of Tsutomu Higo, even if I can't understand what's being said about me.

My Kind of Book

Here's another page from the book. You can see my digital signature in the lower right-hand corner.

Published Works

Some of my POV-Ray art was recently published in a German book on 3-D computer graphics. I'd say it looks pretty good in that format.

Dreaming

I recently started keeping a dream journal again, after finding a cool wikibook on lucid dreaming. I moved my CD player off of my nightstand and replaced it with my dream journal, a pencil, and a red LED light (which has a very mellow kind of light for night vision). Having the journal there had an automatic effect on my dream recall. I guess I am a natural journaler; if the outlet is there, I'll start observing and making mental notes of things to record. I was amazed to be able to remember five distinct dream sequences on two nights in a row. Each night I got around nine hours of sleep. I heard once that we have 90 minute sleep cycles, but I guess mine must be closer to 9/5 hours, or 108 minutes. The duration of my sleep cycles may vary, so I'll try to see if I can observe any patterns. I have a feeling that it is closely related to my circadian rhythms, day lengths, and how well I maintain a good sleep schedule, but it may be more related to the composition of my suprachiasmatic nucleus. As you can tell from the time of this post, I'm not doing an especially good job of maintaining my sleep schedule right now. I need to work on my sleep hygiene, I guess. This afternoon I came home, got a snack, and took a three and a half hour nap. I did, however, have some interesting dreams during that time...

Recipe For a Mess

Recipe for a mess: Pile 500 pounds of snow, hollow out, bake at 50 degrees for three days. It was a nice sized quinzhee that my girlfriend and I built. My youngest brother helped a bit too, and even slept in it one night. It's now flooded with a couple inches of slush. Slush sucks. Rain in Minnesota on February 13th is rather odd. Global climate change is a reality; I'm definitely buying a hybrid automobile if I have the option.

Recipe For a Healthy Snack

Recipe for healthy snack: place one small container of organic fruit-on the bottom yogurt upside down in the center of a bowl. Surround with several ripe red raspberries. Break the breading off of two low fat Fig Newman's cookies and place around the edge. Divide the fruit from the cookies in half and lay pieces on the yogurt's fruit. Cover the top with a dozen freshly chopped almonds, and then drizzle on a bit of Hershey's chocolate syrup. It's a great mix of textures and flavors that you're sure to enjoy. [Edit: 2-22-05, I made it again. Delicious!]

I Shuffle

My new Ipod Shuffle, very cool. The cord was too long, so I modified a triangular pencil grip to act as a cord wrap. I used an exact-o knife to shape it and cut a couple of notches into it.

The Call

What is a calling? What does it mean to get "The Call? Finding one's calling is a wonderful thing, because it means that one has found their place in the scheme of things. It could be that one has found a career that suits them well, or some great purpose to support. Getting "The Call" is a powerful and often life changing experience for people, but it is not always such a good thing. I'm sure most people have heard stories of how psychotic individuals have done terrible things because some entity outside of themselves told them to. It may have been that some dark force gave them suggestions, but it surely wasn't god. I believe that if one gets a message from god, that it would not seem to come from outside of oneself, but that one would simply be aware of something that earlier they were not.

My grandfather studied physics and engineering in college, and then suddenly changed course and became a Navy chaplain and a Methodist minister. He claims to have gotten "The Call", and he then knew what his path in life would be. I think that it worked well for him, as he raised a family and was a great pastor. I'm sure there are many priests or ministers who "got the call", but are very poor spiritual leaders in their communities. I think that one should be very careful with the interpretation of such signs, and listen not just to their heads, but to their hearts.

I hope that in the twilight of my life, I will be able to look back and say that I found my calling.