Amon Amarth at the House of Blues in Hollywood

This was an amazing concert!
The supporting bands were Eluveitie and Holy Grail, and they rocked. I would've enjoyed the concert had it only been them, but they weren't why I was there. By the time Amon Amarth took the stage, things were insane! The mosh pit was a frothing mass of rabid vikings. A guy was wearing a wolf pelt. People had horned helms. I went crowd surfing, but also got knocked on my ass moshing a few times.
These guys are seriously awesome.

Dark Tranquillity in L.A.

I went to see Dark Tranquillity open a concert at the Wiltern. I brought some trash-bags against the forecast of rain, but I forgot that they were the small kitchen sized ones. It did rain, and we ripped head and arm holes into them and wore them as shirts; they were about the right size for that. Anyway, we stood for an hour in the rain and met some dude who was hitting on some chick who had come from Mexico City to see DT.

DT was awesome, but sadly, people were still finding their seats for the first few songs. They only played seven songs before they left the stage and were replaced by The Devil Wears Prada, a band which was doing nothing for me except making me glad I had earplugs.

The show closed with Killswitch Engage, which was fun. Musically, I liked them much better than Prada but certainly not as much as DT. However, the performance was at least as enjoyable because I had had time to get hopped up on energy drinks and beer by that point, and the crowd was really into it.

I think that I got seated in the Prada section or something, because a bunch of people who sat silently and made me feel awkward for headbanging during DT started flipping out when those spazzy kids took the stage. Anyway, basically everyone was rocking out to killswitch, which makes sense because they were headlining and all.

I really need to see a show with Dark Tranquillity headlining. If seeing those seven songs with that mellow crowd was worth two hours driving and an hour standing in the rain (and it was), then holy shit a real show will be good.

http://www.darktranquillity.com/realindex.html
They played:
Terminus (Damage Done)
? Shadow in Our Blood ?(We are the Void)
Lesser Faith (Fiction)
Misery's Crown (Fiction)
Treason Wall (Damage Done)
Iridium (We are the Void)
Final Resistance (Damage Done)

Bobbing Heads

This week (or maybe it was last week, but it was this month, anyway), I was in the lab with two coworkers and I was talking about a hypothesis of mine about the reason why birds bob their heads. I thought that it was to give them depth perception, because the fields of view from their two eyes don't overlap very much and so they shouldn't have depth perception while their head is stationary. One of my coworkers said no, it's because there's a tendon connecting their legs to their head, so the head has to move when the legs do. The other guy believed him because he's older and more senior than I am. I suggested that the reason why there would be a tendon to do what he claimed it did could be because the resulting head bobbing gives depth perception, but no one seemed to care or believe me. I tried to argue that other animals with eyes on the sides of their heads, such as deer, also seem to bob their heads a bit while walking. They still weren't buying it.

So, I looked it up. Biologists think that birds bob their heads for image stabilization or for depth perception through motion parallax, or probably both. So, my hypothesis is reasonable and probably correct. Furthermore, a bird will not bob its head if it walks on a treadmill, and it will bob its head if carried forward without being allowed to move its legs. So the head motion is not linked to the feet at all; it's triggered by visual stimulus.

By the time I had reached the conclusion that the tendon hypothesis was bullshit, one of my coworkers had left and it was only the guy who had suggested the tendon with me, and not the guy who believed him over me. He told me he made it up as a joke, just to see if the other guy would believe it.

What's the lesson? Some people care more about who's right than what's right. Or if they aren't sure what's right, they at least fall back on trying to determine who's right. Sure the guy thought about it a little bit, but in the end he didn't know what to think so he trusted the older person over me, even though he was being deceived.

Science, of course, should never be about who's right, but only what's right. People can't own facts. Unfortunately, we sometimes have to choose to trust someone because it would take too long to verify every single bit of knowledge ourselves, but we should always prefer to use reason to determine what is right instead of simply listening to an authority who we trust to be right.

Introduction to the Book of Bob

Introduction
In the past, present, and future, there was, is, and will be BOB. Bob is the light that comes from darkness. The hope that comes from despair. The courage that comes from fear. The salsa that comes from Tahiti. Bob is everything that's good, and everything that's bad. Bob is All, All is Bob. Bob is Bob.

Squirrelies!

Went for a hike in the canyon today and saw some squirrels running around. Picked up a stick and hit other sticks with it. Climbed on some rocks. Walked a bit over 5 miles.
I like squirrels.

Bob X: The Flood

Chapter X
The Flood
Shortly after the commandments were given, Ralph blew up a nearby dam, sending millions of gallons of water flooding into Bobland's streets. Despite the fact that one goldfish named Sven, who was about to die from loss of water, turned out to live and swim in the waters happily (or at least until that next Tuesday, when he ran out of food too!), much of the city was ravaged. The Almighty Bob called for a meeting of all the wisest Bobs in the land. They said that the flood should stay, for many more fishies could be saved. However, the All-Good Bob disagreed. "The dead cows are drowning! The llamas are having trouble flying away because their wings are heavy with water!" Bob protested.
A messenger ran in. "Sir, the downtown district is now under water! The paper-mache fortresses have become weak and water-logged! We must do something!"
A wise Bob said, "We can't even use our sporks to dredge away the water, they will not hold liquid!" "But we can't use spoons!" another jumped in.
Suddenly, with a twinge of pain, The Great Bob remembered that his aluminum foil shack would not be able to withstand the excess water! "Screw the fishies! We must --" "Sir", interrupted a wise Bob, "How does one screw a fish?"
Bob's rage grew, but then he had an idea. He would tell all the wise Bobs to duck -- sorry, I mean pour dehydrated water on the city from helicopters. The dehydrated water will hydrate to form water, but it will get confused because water was what it started out with, and it would seem nice if the dehydrated water would do something useful. The dehydrated water, in an attempt to look useful, would then try to come up with theory of relativity and when it miserably failed, the newly hydrated water would flee in anguish.
The wise Bobs began to mutter amongst themselves, but Bob put his foot down. "We MUST save Bobland. Somehow. Not for us, maybe not for our children, and maybe not even for the llamas. We must save Bobland just to piss off Ralph!"
And so it was done. The water, in its failed attempt to look useful, flooded away and left the streets of Bobland bone dry. Bobland won once again. Yay.

Today at the Tokamak

This is a new segment called Today at the Tokamak.

Let me start by explaining that a tokamak is a magical magnetic doughnut that's designed to hold a plasma that's hotter than the sun. It's not actually magic, though, it's science. Take that, Harry Potter.

I care about tokamaks because when plasmas get really hot, as in the sun, a wonderful thing called nuclear fusion can happen. Now, you might be terrified about anything nuclear because of things like nuclear weapons and melt downs of nuclear FISSION plants. Now, let me tell you that we couldn't turn a tokamak into a weapon even if we wanted to. Meltdown = impossible. It just doesn't work that way. It also doesn't produce long lived radioactive waste. So it's safe, and it's clean, and it's a way of producing energy.

The reason we don't get all our energy from fusion already (actually, we do, because sunlight comes from fusion and sunlight is what grew the plants that now have turned into oil and coal and whatnot) is because we haven't figured out quite the best way of keeping these plasmas bottled up yet. You see, the plasma hates being confined within the fancy magnetic cage we've built for it, and it's very crafty when it comes to getting out. There are all kinds of funny instabilities and leaks that let enough of the plasma out of containment that it touches the wall and cools down.

It's not actually dangerous that the plasma breaches confinement because it's not very dense. It doesn't carry enough energy to seriously damage anything, but if it does get out, it won't be under the heat and pressure we need in order for it to fuse and produce energy.

So anyway, today I wrote some code for part of a simulation and reviewed the drawings and schedules I made before the break. Today I was writing in IDL, but I also use C sometimes. The drawings are in SolidWorks, so they're actually full 3D models. I'm also modeling a lens assembly with Zemax.

Bob IX: The Twelve Commandments

Chapter IX
The Twelve Commandments
After witnessing the rebellion, The Great Bob decided to give Bobs everywhere some laws to live by or die horribly and painfully by in a great expanse of bloody crusades for. (See Christianity) These have become known as the Bob Commandments. A brief list follows:
1. A LLAMA IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH
2. THOU SHALT NOT BUY THIS BOOK
3. THOU SHALT NOT TRUST BLUE ALIENS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE PINK
4. THOU SHALL MAKE ONE HOLY PILGRIMAGE TO THE LAND OF BOB
5. THE AUTHORS OF THIS BOOK ARE EXTREMELY EVIL
6. THOU SHALT NOT USE BOB'S NAME IN VAIN
7. THOU SHALT NOT HAVE YOUR BOB AND EAT IT TOO
8. THOU SHALT EAT ALL YOUR MEALS WITH SPORKS
9. THOU SHALT SAY, "THE SIXTH SHEIK'S SIXTH SHEEP IS SICK" 10 TIMES FAST
10. THOU SHALT NOT KNOWINGST. THEREFORE, HASBEEN, CONSIENCOUSLY, HENCEFORTH, ART THOU FORSAKENESS?
12. THERE IS NO ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT.
As the newly appointed The Bob read these commandments, the people cheered; for they knew then they had 12 utterly useless rules to live by.

Beach run in 52:45

Take that, Patrick. Time includes getting stuck at a full cycle of the Torrey Pines light and running up the stairs and unlocking the door. I kept running until I passed the aquarium on the way up and broke gate at the no parking sign beyond it. I walked up the rest of the hill and resumed running at the top and then all the way back down.

Approximate distance: 4.9 miles
Time: 52:45
Elevation change: 126 meters
Terrain: Very flat + Very hilly, mostly offroad

Thrashbarg 14

And the Great BOB spoke to them, saying:

Behold, for thou who art faithful unto me, thy BOB, shall mine ore from the Earth, and thou shalt make of it for thyselves sporks in the image of my One True Spork, which doth hang in the expanse of sky above thee. Thou shalt employ thine sporks at every meal, and useth not any other utensil, for the spork is the one true utensil, and all others shall be abomination to thee. Spoons shall thou not use; neither use thee forks. Knives are right out. And when thou hast eaten thine meal with thy spork, give thanks unto me, thy BOB, who hast imparted unto thee the secret of the spork.

And so the people did rejoice, for given unto them was the power and the glory of the spork, and it was to be theirs for ever and ever.