Happy New Year!

To be redundant: happy new year, everyone.

I actually don't have much else to say - my break consists of zoning out for the first three days (dammit, I can't blame this on turkey-derived tryptophan - no turkey in the house), being dragged by my parents to crowded places on the fourth day, and calculations for all days thereafter. Them calculations (and a poorly cobbled-together database for the generated data) aren't going too well, but at least they allow me to assiduously avoid reading papers, especially reviews*.

Now I'm freaking out about 1) seeing my boss next Monday without a complete, analyzed data-set in hand (or not having read all the literature I ought to have read, for that matter) and 2) synthesis.

Seriously, if anyone has advice about the latter, I'll take it. I've read Shriver's book on handing air-sensitive compounds, watched videos on how to use the cannula and the syringe, and that's about it. Given that my first reaction next week will be on a large scale (and extraordinarily air-sensitive), I'm not ready!

One would've logically thought that inorganic lab classes would've taught some of these things, but in my case, um, not really, they didn't. At least I know how to use a glove box. I guess.

Only a few of resolutions this year:
1. Do less badly in math, especially of the pure variety, without slipping on the chemistry side.
2. Closely related to the previous: try to keep the overall average decent.
2. Try not to do anything too disastrous in the lab.
3. Maybe, just maybe, get publication-worthy data.

Judging by the screams outside, it must be new year's day. I hope your break has been more interesting and/or productive than mine, and have a happy new year (for extra redundancy).

(Shoutout to malfunctioning university email server: stop spamming one inbox while forgetting the other two!**)

*Review papers become even more intimidating than usual if they have mug shots of one's PI on them. I shiver just thinking about it *shivers*.
**Yea I have three email addresses associated with my name in real life. The university one, a personal one, and a backup. Maybe I should set up an off-line backup one day - after all, it's better to have one backup too many than one too few.

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People are confusing

Ugh. I should NOT have studied at all for quantum. Should've spent it on complex analysis instead. Modulo stupid mistakes, I'm practically guaranteed a perfect score on quantum. That's not a reflection of my intelligence, but a reflection of a professor's laziness. What kind of lazy @#$^& puts only historical stuff and 1D particle-in-a-box on the midterm? (Wait. I ought to be glad that the midterm was easy. But I'm complaining anyway. Eh.)

Now I'm enjoying my last few days before I get slaughtered by complex analysis midterm marks. I think I will pass. Maybe. It's not even a hard midterm if I know what I am doing like I ought to. Blanked out on the assignment-like problems (embarrassing!) but maybe, just maybe, my derivations aren't too holey and will hold water. Sigh.

Naturally, by "enjoy" I actually mean, study. In this case, for analytical, which isn't hard but will involve a lot of information. My 3.75 cm binder is mostly full and there's still 1/3 of a term left. Maybe I can fit in a calculation or two...I miss them lately.

Anyway, that's not what I really want to write about in this post (if it was then the title would've been a complete non sequitur). Now the rest of this post is probably too personal for most - the reader is hereby given full warning.

In case it isn't obvious, I am a girl. And single. And happy to remain so. As long as my peers respect me, that's good enough; I don't need them to like me. Indeed, I suspect most don't. My chemistry peers probably think that I'm a show-off (I try not to answer too many questions in class now). My math peers probably think that I'm stupid. All with its own reasons.

What's weird is when some people - inevitably male* - show signs of liking me anyway. It's disturbing and unnatural to have someone say that they like to spend time with me, in person and in emails. Way too many emails. No dammit, don't say that, it makes me uncomfortable. It's even more uncomfortable to have someone walk me home - first, I like walking home alone (it lets my mind wander), and second, I don't really want the guy to blather on for hours in my house and waste my time, but feel obliged to be polite and invite him in anyway.

See, if he outright said that he wants to pursue a romantic relationship, that'd be easy - I'd say no, and we go our separate ways (I hope - that's what happened last time, anyway). But he didn't. Then again - if even I notice something like this, there's got to be something to it, right? It's not just me overreacting, given that my understand-people-sensor seems to be inherently defective and bordering on non-functional?

It's not that I find him creepy. He's a nice guy, knowledgeable (and talkative) about his sub-fields of interest. Just...I prefer colleagues, not boyfriends.

In any case, how I feel about the guy is irrelevant. I can't afford to have any relationship that even vaguely approaches being romantic - it's too distracting. My time is already stretched too thinly in the first place - I don't need another complication.

I guess I'm trying to say to myself and to the world at large - I need a lot of personal space, both real and virtual (don't spam my inbox either). More than most people. Just leave me alone**.

*Female friends are hard to come by :(. My circle of acquaintances is almost completely male in character. Sigh.
**Well ok, I like comments on my blog posts. And it's ok to distract me with shiny chemistry or shiny math. Just not when said chemistry or math carries an undercurrent of...people stuff.

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My Mac Behaved Like a PC

Today my Mac wouldn't start up on the first try. Yikes.

Fortunately it started up on the second try. But I'm worried - macs aren't supposed to do that!

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Reminders to Self, (another?) Software Edition

Stuff I still need to install sooner or later. Preferably sooner. After I finish my assignments for the week, probably.

• Windows 7, along with an antivirus program for it, whenever that comes out. I don't particularly want to keep Vista...
• Microsoft Office 2007 (don't tell me to use the Mac version). Dammit, I need to shell out the money for Office. All I really need is Excel - why can't Numbers be half-competent? (OpenOffice isn't good enough, either.)
• Random Windows-only programs. Beilstein, Chem3D, that sort of thing.

On the advice of several people:

• Textwrangler*
• MacPort
• Cyberduck (I'm waiting for the official Snow Leopard compatible release rather than the beta.)

A CAS (e.g. Mathematica, Maple) would be good too.

*For some reason some people find it funny that I used to use vi. I'd have kept using it except that vi sometimes reads carriage returns wrong (depending on where the original file came from) which ruins all subsequent file manipulations. Right now I'm using TextEdit, but that's pretty limited (e.g. I kept trying to type / instead of command-F for searching).

[edited to clarify]
It's apparently not vi reading the carriage returns wrong. It's stupid Microsoft Windows for putting them in funny in the first place. TextEdit interprets them and therefore doesn't show them, but the Unix part of the computer tells me everything. Back to vi for now I guess.

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How (not) to Wreck Your Shiny New Laptop

Ok, I'm not at that point yet, actually. But the next time I login, I will be nervous. Make that extremely nervous.

I'm trying to install a program; the installer is a tar-ed binary (first reaction: what, it's not dmg?). Fortunately, it came with instructions. Unfortunately, the instructions assumed that you knew what you were doing.

For example, there are many files and folders fundamental to the computer that aren't listed explicitly in one's home directory. Anything starting with . (for which there exists the command "ls -a"), or things like /etc, for example. But they are there, and one can get to them in the usual ways if one knows that they exist. Of course, seeing them is not the same as writing on them - many of these files require root privileges. That alone makes me nervous. (I haven't enabled root on my computer yet, and I don't really want to. Nor do I feel like using the all-powerful "sudo" command.)

Another problem I had was mounting. It's trivial to mount a CD, usually: put it in, and the computer will know it's there. Question: where is the CD mounted? It should be at "/mnt/cdrom", but I had no such directory. I still don't know where the mounted image is, actually. In the end I gave up and copied the entire zipped installer into my computer, and went from there, but that's because I was lucky enough to have a fairly small zipped file. If it's huge, I can't do that.

The third thing is, I need to create and change .login in my home directory (I'm not touching the one in /etc). This is apparently what the computer reads when I log in to an account. So now I'm afraid of logging off, because the changes come into effect the next time I login.

Fourth, I have a serial number. What I don't have is a prompt for the serial number. Huh?

Lastly, where is the application, anyway? (I am seeing alot of .exe's, but I thought a program usually has an actual, clearly labelled icon with which one can open to start said program. Or am I supposed to run the program in Terminal, too? Grumble.

Oh, and please, please, please let this program be compatible with Snow Leopard. I don't have Leopard.

(The program has a Windows version, which I know how to use - at least it has an icon - but I need the full power of the computer to run the thing and this means a Mac installer - I don't want to run Boot Camp.)

Assuming that I can login at all, the worst case scenario is using Time Machine. If I can't, then I might have to re-install everything. Exciting, isn't it?

In short, I need a crash course in Unix. The problem is, these things usually come up on an ad-hoc basis, and there's no course that teaches every random thing that comes up.

Anyway, if the next post or edit comes from a PC, you'll know what happened. Gulp.

[Edited]
Well. I can still log in. And apparently I do have to run the program from Terminal (sigh). Whether the thing will work remains to be seen.

[Edited again]
It's finicky, but it works! It works!

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Noooooo

I have to install Vista on my laptop. Vista! Noooo (i.e. what happens when you need a PC-only program *now*) And it's so close until I can get Windows 7, too!

Also the downloader supplied by Microsoft is being an idiot and won't let me open it on a Mac. Stupid. Fortunately, I still have my PC. Less fortunately, I have to do the download over wireless because my cable internet is locked to the Mac. 1 GB of software over a wireless internet connection. We'll see how this goes. Sigh. I hope my USB drive has enough space so I can transfer the stupid image back to the Mac.

Worst case scenario: I'll have to get the installation CD from the university. Aw, I have to walk to school...(actually, at the rate the download goes, I think I will do that. Not sure whether I'm even allowed to download 1 GB of stuff over university wireless.)

I guess I have the Beilstein installation to look forward to. And some other stuff.

[Edited]
Dammit, too late, the appropriate university people left for the day. Installation will have to wait until tomorrow...

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I has new toy.

Well. The Macbook (Pro) arrived safe and sound.

The largest problem I have is that the version of antivirus I can get from my university is incompatible with Snow Leopard.

The other really annoying thing is that my license key for ChemDraw (for mac of course), for some reason, doesn't work. Gotta talk with the appropriate admin.

Also, MacTeX is insensately huge.

I need to get used to new shortcuts, too.

Other than that, shiny! (And yay, working monitor!)

(Hmm, what else do I need to install? Antivirus, FireFox plus addons, MacTeX with BibDesk and LyX, printer, files on an external hard drive far, far away... *Thinks*)

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On Exporting to PDF in LyX

There are three choices for exporting to pdf in (my version of) LyX: dvipdfm, pdflatex, and ps2pdf. They do exactly as advertised: export from dvi to pdf, LaTeX to pdf, and postscript to pdf, respectively.

It turns out that only one of them does vector graphics. More precisely:

dvipdfm does no images whatsoever. So the output will have huge blank spaces where pictures were. No good.

ps2pdf does images, but it rasterizes them. Given that I've gone through the trouble to make sure that all my plots and graphs are vector format*, having them changed into horrible, pixellated crap does not make me happy.

pdflatex is the nicest - it's the only one that keeps my vector format images. The only problem is, sometimes, the LaTeX won't compile and so the converter won't do its job. (Admittedly, when the LaTeX doesn't compile, it's usually my fault. Sometimes I get experimental in the preamble.)

I can also use a pdf printer to print the file, but that frankly looks like crap. Like it came from a scanner at low resolution. Even the text looks nasty.

*pdf, actually - I could also do eps or svg but pdf was the easiest for lazy me. Maybe if they were in eps, ps2pdf will behave.

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'K, I did it.

Ok, I joined the Dark Side.

I bought a MacBook Pro. Squee! Squee!

Currently: agitating about shipping.

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I Hate Microsoft Office

If it weren't for the fact that Excel is nonpareil (it's not *good*, it's just better than everything else I've seen), I'd ditch Microsoft Office in an instant. As it is, however...

The thing is, my computer has Office 2000 (archaic, I know). Microsoft has this converter thing that allows Office 2000 to read Office 2007 files.

Well, that thing ain't workin' now. And a re-installation didn't work. Grar. I should get Office 2007. (Then again, Office 2010 is coming out next year...)

[edited to add]
Google docs is a savior.
On the other hand: Crap, where's my USB drive? [later: whew, found it. Preciousss...]

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Home Depot Doesn't Have Everything

Home depot doesn't have every imaginable piece of commonly used hardware/"soft"-ware in existence. Amazing.

More specifically, it doesn't have:

• High-temperature stable adhesives (highest one is 50 ^oC; that's just embarrassing)
• High-temperature thermal paste*

In my distress I forgot to get ordinary epoxy. But, on the bright side, at least I finally got my beloved can of WD-40. And I restrained myself from getting more random reagents. Woot.

Time to make a trip to an automotive shop. And the physics department electronics store. Sigh (<-- lazy).

[Edited]
The automotive store had what I wanted, yes! Stove and gasket cements were just what I was looking for. Now it remains to see whether they'll actually do what I want them to do. Interestingly enough, one of them is basically PDMS stiffened with silica and FeO, while the other is more or less a silicate solution.

*I tried electronics stores and computer stores as well, but their thermal pastes don't work over 150 ^oC, and are insensately costly. 10 dollars for 1 mL, you've got to be joking.

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Note to Self, Excel Chart Edition

Lacking any better software, I do all my graphs in Excel, paste them to Paint*, then save them as .png (sometimes .tiff). This works fine on small-ish images.

Recently I want to try something that'll give a nicer resolution, just because I like pretty things, particularly pretty things that can be scaled to (at least in theory) any size without loss of quality.

Obviously, neither png or tiff are vector graphic formats. Apparently the fastest way to get a vector image out of an Excel chart is to print it as a pdf, then untangle the mess in a program that can edit these things. Messy *moue*.

I'm not sure whether I'm bored enough to play with data visualization in a CAS. Sometimes they turn out well, sometimes they don't.

Which image format(s) do people like to use on their papers?

My supervisor uses a program that is perfectly capable of producing high-resolution images. However, given that he uses Microsoft Word** for the text part of his papers, I'm not sure whether his image handling techniques will be adequate for my purposes.

*That's probably the only thing I'll certainly miss in a Mac. Ugly as it is, I like Paint; it's great for quick sketches in assignments (e.g. geometry proofs, proton NMR splitting trees).
**I tried Word 2007. The math still looks terrible.

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Happy Canada Day!

Nothin' more to say other than that. Eh.

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Random Question During Cookie-Baking

Is it interesting to study the topology of fractal objects like the Sierpinski carpet? Given that they tend to be "mostly holes" rather than a nice* "surface" per se.

I actually don't know any topology, unfortunately, so my question might be a really dumb one. Oh well.

Anyway, I thought about this because I was making Sierpinski cookies (3 iterations, where a plain square is the 0th iteration) and they turned out kind of deformed. Ok, really deformed. However, I can probably say that the cookies (before I bake them) can be continuously un-deformed into the (3rd iteration) Sierpinski carpet. Idly wondering whether I'd actually be correct in saying that led to the actual question posed at the beginning of this post.

*"Nice" means alot of things in my lexicon. I usually use it with functions, where it means definitely at least continuous, probably C¹ (or even smooth, maybe analytic, though I don't use these conditions much yet), possibly with nonzero derivative everywhere if the function's C¹. For a surface I'll parametrize it (if possible) then apply my definition of "nice" for functions (if there exists more than one parametrization I guess I'll pick the "canonical" one if it exists, or just "the nicest one I know for my current purposes" if there's no obvious choice). For a subset in a metric space I guess I want it to be compact and connected (it's been awhile since real analysis).

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It's Physics and Ridiculous and Kind of Inappropriate,

but it's hilarious. A Unified Quantum Theory of the Sexual Interaction.

Hat tip to: An Unapologetic Mathematician.

No I'm not currently studying calculus. Yes the midterm's tomorrow. Sigh.

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Don't know whether this will sway anybody, but...

Two screenshots. One's done in Word, the other in LyX.



The "write time" isn't that useful a guide, but I should mention that I know most of the shortcuts in Equation Editor, too.

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Random Thoughts

I spent half my day staring at an instrument (and the other half staring at my supervisor fiddle with said instrument). Unfortunately, the result was not pretty enough for subsequent characterization. Sigh. Please let there be no more instrument-staring.

On the bright side, today's weather is gorgeous: 12 ^oC and cloudy. Yesterday was about 20 ^oC and sunny - it felt incredibly hot! So today's a nice change.

On a completely unrelated note, remind me to take my lab coat home at the end of this week - I need to sew a few things back together (and wash it too, while I'm at it...).

Another unrelated note: my supervisor waved off LaTeX as being too user-unfriendly today - I guess he doesn't notice that LaTeX also produces much prettier documents than Word can. Sometime this term, I should introduce him to LyX.

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In Search for a New Laptop

Add this to the list of problems my laptop has: the battery life is now approximately 15 minutes, with the only programs open being Firefox and LyX (along with the background operating system stuff).

So yea, I want a new laptop. (It's not quite urgent yet, as the computer still runs, but it's something to think about). Question: What to get?

The requirements are, for the most part, pretty simple; I mostly just need a laptop for the usual internet/word processing stuff. It should be portable, with a good battery life, because I plan to take it to work where there's no outlet for me to plug into. At least 2 USB ports, preferably 3. No netbooks.

There's one caveat, though: the candidate laptop should support computational chemistry activities. This means (off the top of my head) the ability to run a Unix environment (e.g. X11) and reasonable* CPU power; I really would rather not wait for 20 hours for a transition metal complex calculation that may or may not fail! I should be able to leave the laptop on doing something heavy without worrying about overheating or the fan prematurely dying or something unfortunate like that.

To be honest, this is a weird time to be getting a laptop; I was hoping that the current one will last through undergrad. Anyway, assuming that I can get into grad school (which won't even be on the horizon for about 2-3 years, sadly**), this new laptop should either a) last me through graduate school or b) self-destruct right when I finish undergrad. (I have a feeling I'll be too broke during graduate school to replace laptops.)

Target budget is $1000, but if the laptop's built to last more than 5 years, I can spend more than that.

To address the Mac-vs-PC thing - I grew up with PCs, so that's what my natural inclination would be (especially with the coming advent of Windows 7). Also, Windows is compatible with most things at all the workplaces I've been in. On the other hand, Macs are pretty. And they have X11, as well as Keynote (which is *Really* pretty). And they are known to last for a decent length of time.

So. Any comments? Advice?

*A certain someone's desktop has the ability to run my 20-hour calculation in 1.5 hours, without otherwise slowing performance. It's gorgeous! (Yes, I am jealous, but it's a desktop...)
**I'd whine about how I'm graduating after everyone else in my peer group, but nobody wants to hear that.

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Too Easily Swayed

One particular person in my life is being a bad influence. Dammit! Now I want a Mac.

That particular person has a delightfully powerful desktop. And it's a Mac. (And it's pretty, as Macs tend to be.) When one hears how a unix/linux based machine can do all these computationally neat things...mmm. Dark side, indeed. *Twitch*

It totally doesn't help that my computer is currently misbehaving and that I am frustrated by the limitations of the PCs at school with respect to computational chemistry. Right now, the only way to keep my laptop monitor from flickering like crazy is to clip the edge of the monitor with a foldback clip. (Of course, that's a hardware problem, but...pretty things have a peculiar way of justifying themselves.)

[Edited]
As if in response to me threatening to get a Mac, my laptop now works again. Tch.

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The Last thing a Student Wants to See at 6:30 a.m. in the Morning

Plaid. On one's precious laptop monitor.


Miraculously it's working now. No, it's not a virus - as I've mentioned before, it's a hardware issue. Sigh. Currently backing up stuff.

I *really* need to get someone to look at the laptop... please let it not die before the term ends.

The upside of the day is that I finished one set of marking (wooooo!), and I have an extension for one of my final projects. Now...cram organic (midterm begins in oh, 4.5 hours or so, complete with classes in between; thankfully it's just pericyclic reactions, which at least have the decency to have a FMO theory explanation).

Postscript: I still need a job. Isn't the current economic situation wonderful?

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