Reading Week

Reading week is coming up! Naturally, work goes on, reading week or no; I'm just relieved that there'll be no classes for a week so that I can get more work done.

Funny how I don't really like classes any more, however interesting they may be. They just get in the way of experiments. If the scheduling is a bit less awkward, I won't mind it so much, but right now every other morning is pretty much wasted, with an awkward mid-morning hour that's not quite long enough to set up a reaction. Grump.

Plans for the week:

• Finish two mini-projects, and maybe, just maybe, one major project too.
• Reaction marathon. I forgot to dry a 100 mL Schlenk flask before I left for the weekend, oops. Other than that, I think I'm good to go.
• Crystallography final project, which is due unnaturally early (in February!)
• Measure theory assignment; we're going to start Fourier analysis after reading week! !!!

Oh. To those who celebrate, happy Chinese new year! Tonight's "the 30th"; it's traditionally a time for the entire family to gather together, kind of like thanksgiving. Too. Much. Food. *expires on chair, twitching*

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Handwriting

Wow. Start of a new term, and my handwriting is officially crap.

Like, I suspect, most students, I type a lot; more than I write, in fact, especially over break when I don't actually have to write much of anything besides a note or two.

And now, my writing's terrible. I was signing up for a training session and um, yea, it's basically a scrawl, though (barely) legible.

Damn, I used to have decent handwriting. Not perfect, mind you (to my parents' dismay), but decent. Now, I'm lucky if I can read my own writing. Yikes. At least I write quickly...?

Oh, you want to hear about my first day? Well. Morning was classes, mostly. I lent my laptop to one of the profs for his lecture because his went toast (auspicious, that). Afternoon was spent talking to the boss and a more-senior lab member about the project, and cleaning the miscellaneously scrounged glassware required for my vacuum line.

Amusing sight of the day: multiple drawers full of nothing but packing peanuts (they used to hold glassware but when the glassware's all in use...).

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Relieved

Some things just make one sit down and whisper thanks to nobody in particular.

I didn't fail complex analysis. Didn't do well, mind you, but I didn't fail. Thank you, professor, thank you! I am so relieved, it's undescribeable.

Seriously, my only resolution for next year is to concentrate on math more. It's easy for me to do decently well in my chemistry classes; it's much more difficult for me to do well in math. My math-muse doesn't like my tendency to just blow through all my assignments, so she ditches me. I need to um, cajole her back to my side so that I actually start understanding this stuff once again. And somehow I need to do this without losing my chemistry half.

Sigh. Muses are capricious beings. Especially math ones.

Because I have an unfortunate tendency to mumble-to-self about marks, I'll put that up here, as usual:

My chemistry marks were decent. Lab marks were passable; I really didn't like my labs (especially the prelabs part) this term. Bioinorganic was a pleasant surprise (probably because the professor was awesome; now I'm wondering what the raw marks were like). MD was quite nice, but not nearly as unexpected. Analytical was alright - could be better, could be worse; I'm also wondering about exam statistics for this one.

Now I'm waiting for three courses: two just had final exams today, one was last week. We'll see how it goes.

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Short Break

I have a day or two before I need to start studying for my next couple of finals. What should I spend the time doing?

1. Sleep. Make and consume cookies. Look at girly things. Being unproductive.
2. Chipping away at my computational project, which um, involves alot of species. As in, the number of molecules scale with O(2^n) where n is the number of fragments that strikes my boss's (or for that matter, my own) fancy.
3. Looking up the literature regarding the main project for my upcoming work term. It's going to involve honest-to-goodness synthesis. *Nervously* When's sticking a hapless math-chemistry half-breed into a synthetic research lab ever a good idea again?
4. Actually, y'know, study.

(Aside: bioinorganic was "ok". Putatively easy, but it's one of those exams where I walk out, check my notes, and realized that I drew a whole bunch of structures wrong. Sigh. Too late now.)

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No More Remedial Quantum!

As opposed to actual quantum mechanics, which, of course, is much more elegant.

But yea. Quantum final done! With any luck, I'll never have to see the professor again (except possibly in the corridors of the chemistry building), and perhaps my desire to stab him with a piece of chalk will fade with time. Maybe.

I'm not as confident about this final because
1) I didn't study. At all. Well, ok, I tried for an hour than gave up out of boredom.
2) There's multiple guess choice. On a math-heavy subject. That's just sad.

Surprisingly, no commutators. No real derivations, either. Just...bashing. For example, one of the questions require integration by parts twice. Two times. Ew.

Needless to say, I'm toast for the next quantum course, because this one taught me nothing and I'm not sure whether half-assed self-study is sufficient for fourth-year quantum courses. Then again, yay! No more dumbed-down quantum!

Next up: bioinorganic. Start worrying...now.

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Liveblogging the cramming

Self-distraction?

Start: 9:45 pm (Sigh. Moral of the day: do not start reading a review as a slacking-off mechanism.)

1. Where is my midterm?! T.T
2. The winding lemma, its proof matches its name.
3. Music stopped on its own accord. *Turns it back on* Grumble.
4. Gonna get coffee...mmm, coffee. Even if it's the instant kind.
5. My back hurts from hunching over baby* and notes.
6. Rhapsody in blue. Hell yea!
7. Remind me to update my copy of LyX. And finally getting around to fixing the dictionary for it.
8. I'm starting to get tired of typing "let V \subset \mathbb{C} be open" all the time, but is too lazy to think up a shortcut other than copy-paste at the moment
9. The proof for the Cauchy integral formula (involving indices of cycles) is even longer. Thankfully, not on exam. *Shamelessly skips proof*
10. An orchestral Prelude Op. 3 No. 2 (Rachmaninoff) just sounds weird to me. Too used to the piano version, I guess.
11. Yay I'm on Laurent series now!
12. Typing R \le \infty makes me uncomfortable. Notation abuse!
13. Tired. *Yawn*
14. Argument principle. Shouldn't have written so much during analytical final - my arms hurt!
15. Step 1) of plan done.
16. Step 2) of plan done.

Dammit, I need to sleep. Alarm at 6 am today for step 3.

*what do you call your laptop?

[edited]
Post-mortem: It was bad. Couldn't square the log or find principal branch of cotangent. *Sad*

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Countdown!

No, not until the winter break, but until my complex analysis final. Ack!

No I'm not ready (just started studying tonight because I had another midterm earlier today)!

Plan:
1. Notes for all the proofs that will be on the test.
2. Notes for all the theorems whose statement and application (but whew, not proof) will be on the test.
3. Go through all assignments and their solutions.
4. Freak out. (Actually, insert that in all the steps of the plan.)

Deadline: 9 am tomorrow. 12 hours. 12 hours!

The internets can keep me company while I freak out. 12 hours!

Seriously, this is the exam I am most worried about. After this, it's "just" quantum, bioinorganic, inorganic, CS, and research projects. That, I can do. More or less. (Just wait till Tuesday evening when I start freaking out about bioinorganic *cough*.)

Previously:
My last presentation of the year went surprisingly well, despite literally still writing it 30 minutes before the presentation began. I still talked too fast. Everyone else in the class except one person zoned out, which may or may not be a good thing. Also, it's apparently a good idea to wear a suit to these things - even ordinarily jaded professors do get impressed!

Both molecular dynamics and analytical finals were unremarkable so I guess I won't say much 'bout them. Well, except maybe this little vignette during analytical final:

Me: *Just finished ploughing through entire exam, and quickly flipping through it to see that there are no egregious blank spaces. With 1 hour to spare, starts checking more carefully.*
Prof (why's he standing in front of me?): *whispers* I'm ready for you to hand it in.
Me: *whispers back without looking up* Dammit! Go away!
Prof: *chuckles and, thankfully, goes away*

Oh, we get along fabulously, truly we do.

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Shameless

In theory, the last day of classes was yesterday. In practice, I have final projects due both tomorrow and Tuesday (exams start Wednesday). This explains why I'm on campus, typing away (though it doesn't explain why I'm, y'know, blogging instead of working). I'm blowing off one last (bonus) assignment (><), working on a second one, and freaking out about my last project which I haven't started yet *cough procrastinator cough*

The current assignment is a report - the usual end of term kind in which a student pick a paper from the literature and talks about it. The professor is quite lax about its requirements, only giving a suggested list of headings for the report. Oh, and a page/formatting limit: 6 pages, double-spaced.

Right now I'm at 6 pages just describing half the paper. Given that I don't have the time to make the paper all pretty and concise, I'm shamelessly shrinking the font size at this point. And shrinking the margins. Sorry professor. (Well ok I'm not really sorry, otherwise I won't be doing it...)

At this rate I might even finish the paper before midnight! Back to work, I guess.

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Askance

Someone randomly came up to me and asked me chemistry problems when I was drawing some structures on a random chalkboard today*. Now that's not too unusual - this is undergrad after all - but what's unusual is what the person asked. Certainly I was astonished.

The question was:
One can draw an equilibrium between propanol/acetate on one side, and the corresponding alkoxide/acetic acid on the other side. Which way does the equilibrium go, and why?

*conspicuous pause*

Took me awhile to recover from that one. I basically started with defining the Bronsted-Lowry definition of an acid/base and went from there.

Of course, everyone starts learning this stuff somewhere, but I dare say that second-year organic is not the time or place to start the learning process. More precisely, this should've been taught in general chemistry at the latest. I don't care that the species are organic, this is acid-base chemistry. At the risk of sounding like some codger - what the hell are they teaching kids these days?

*New toy is remarkably stupid (and reticent) about some things and I have to manually compensate for that. Doodling on the chalkboard (apparently) helped with my manual constructions, because now the result is close(r) to what I want. Still not quite right, though, sigh.

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The Best Timpani Solo Ever

This is one of those "it's funnier when you're there" things.

The orchestra - in which I am a percussionist - will have its concert tomorrow. Exciting! Yesterday, we had our last rehearsal. Given that all the larger percussion instruments have already been moved to to the performance venue, us percussionists made do for the rehearsal. Y'know, a chair instead of a drum, that sort of thing.

In particular, our set of timpani are substituted with one large, empty, upturned plastic garbage can, tilted slightly like a Congo drum. It was awesome. All notes - no matter what the score says - are now a dull, flat A (but not quite A-flat) for the duration of the rehearsal.

Anyway, for one of our pieces, the timpani has a solo, a powerful, deliberate statement of the thematic material, repeated three times.

You can imagine how that went with the garbage can:
fff: Bonk, bonk bonk bonk, bonk rolllll (decrescendo to ppp).
*Pregnant pause in which everyone took a second to start laughing*

The percussion section sang the other two repeats over the garbage can solo.

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Poster Feedback

A list of feedback I got about my poster and its presentation.

• Font size is too small (24 pt Helvetica - probably bump it to at least 30 next time, and trim the content).
• More pictures are always better, although it's ok as it is.
• I didn't speak loudly enough (!) This one is surprising.
• An odd juxtaposition, neither of which ought to be present: jargon, colloquialisms.
• Went overtime (by 2 minutes, which is alot given that we only had 5 to start with.)
• Couldn't answer some of the questions *ducks*

But I dare say that my poster is the prettiest one of the lot. 'Cuz I am shallow like that.

Now, I have another presentation tomorrow, which I haven't started yet *cough cough*. Ought to do that now...

(Dammit, same old problem! My presentation is heavy on words/equations and light on pictures. I need more pictorial representations of things.)

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4*3 ft^2 is a lot of room!

One of my courses involves a final project in which the student makes and presents a poster on a relevant subject. In 5 minutes. That's not much longer than an elevator pitch.

Anyway, I'm starting the poster the weekend before it's due and hoping that I can get it printed before the due date. Yea you all know that I'm a huge procrastinator by now.

Given that I only have 5 minutes to present the poster, and that I'm lazy, I don't want to put too much material on the poster. The problem is, the poster actually has a lot of room in it! Data tends to expand to fill all available room given to it, but if I do that, it'd take way to long to present the thing. Besides, things like introductions are supposed to be short.

There's no point in trying to increase the font size; it's plenty big on my screen as it is.

I need more graphs and diagrams to make the thing pretty, too. Sigh.

Slides are much easier to work with - the size of the poster imposes a surprising amount of restriction on how much one can put and how one goes about putting things. Also, slides don't have stand on its own like a poster.

(My apologies for using imperial measurements in the title: that's what I've been given and it's easier to say that than to say "1.21 m by 0.91 m")

[Edited]
A poster costs more than one might think. A lot more - it's a 3-digit number in my case, and it's not even laminated. I'm going to have to scrimp for a few weeks to make up for this. The only saving grace is that the poster's rather pretty.

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New Record (not in a good way)

This is a new record - I'm doing my molecular dynamics assignment in less than 9 hours before it's due.

More to the point, I'm contemplating skipping another class to finish it - that's tantamount to heresy in my book. Yikes. I'm really dropping the ball this week!

Worse: I didn't do so well on the inorganic midterm. It was embarrassing how poorly I did. *Sad*.

Worst: new toy's disagreeing with the literature, so now I have to find out where I messed up. Yay.

[Edited]
I finished! Early! And now, I'm going to bed.

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Another To-do List

Next week's going to be a bit busy due to a confluence of chance events, so I need a to-do list. As usual.

Plans for tonight: do inorganic and quantum. Easy assignments, just need to make sure my mind doesn't wander.

Saturday: one lab report, finalize paper choice for MD final project, and most importantly, figure out complex analysis assignment (at least I started this time).

Sunday: more complex analysis (it's freaking due Monday!), MD assignment

Monday: prelab for physical chemistry lab, finish MD assignment.

Rest of the week: analytical final project (haven't really started yet *cough*)

Fit in between: badger various individuals for signatures (yay bureaucracy), and a lot of calculations. A lot - if it weren't for the fact that I'm too lazy to sftp files between three computers (and, more to the point, keep track of them all), I'll be running jobs on all three right now.

[Edited]
Amount of motivation to do lab report: zero. Instead, I'm cuddling up next to (less shiny but still) new toy. Certain tests are nearly done so I'm anxiously waiting for the data.

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Well, that didn't take long

The new toy is no longer shiny. In fact, it's doing some downright strange things that its predecessor (sensibly) didn't.

I'm nowhere near the stage where I start feeling tempted to take an axe to said new toy (yet); we'll see how it goes.

I guess now is a good time for me to actually do my homework instead of obsessing over lab stuff.

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Never a Good Sign

Is it bad if I am logging into some fancy university-wide cluster for the first time ever, and the thing hangs up on me after I tried to start my first job? (the cluster complained at me because I set the wrong time estimate - ok, fine, but it doesn't have to freaking freeze on me after...)

Dammit I don't like it when a session terminates abnormally.

*Sigh* Now I can't even log in to the cluster. I guess it's offline now. (And this, is why I like running calculations on my own computer...)

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I Has New Toy

Yay! New toy!

Strictly speaking it's not "my" toy, but it's still awesome. I shouldn't actually say what said new toy is, but trust me, I've been playing with it a bit and it works wonderfully so far. No doubt it'll be subject to many curses later on, but for now, I'll just enjoy the novelty of it all before it wears off. It's shiny! And new! And worky!

I'll talk to my PI tomorrow and see what we can do with it, but I can think of a few things already... (Squee!)

Now I have to wrench myself away from new! toy! to work on my lab reports. Sigh. What must be done, must be done.

*Twitch*

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You'd have thought I'd know better by now...

The aforementioned molecular dynamics assignment, now being done 11 hours before it's due! Yay?

Sadly my bottleneck right now is computation time - I need to test large dt values, so... (waits, and waits, and waits...with 7 jobs running on a communal server, I don't feel like piling on more jobs than that. Thankfully, nobody else seem to be running anything at the moment.)

Also, yay, numerical problems!

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To-do List, Midterm Edition

Next week, I'll be faced with a trifecta of exams. Easy, y'say, until you realize that it's: 1) molecular dynamics, 2) quantum mechanics, 3) complex analysis. Two will be on the same day. It must a conspiracy - the most difficult exams just love to congregate together.

Anyway, having slacked off previously all weekend (I think I slept for 20 hours yesterday), I need a to-do list.

• PChem lab - it's actually nearly done, I just need to make up an introduction and a discussion. Sigh. (Done!)
• Inorganic lab - tedious, as usual. At least the yield isn't 0% this time. I need to do prelab, too. (Done. Possibly my worst piece of work ever - I can't think of anything to say - just get it off my desk.)
• MD notes. And a formula sheet - 1 page double-sided but I think I'll leave it single-sided. (Both done)
• Complex analysis! !! !!! (Assignment: supposedly not hard, but I haven't earnestly started it yet, eeeek!) (Now done. Seriously, finished 15 minutes before it was due. Sad.)
• Complex analysis notes.
• Quantum notes - basically, I haven't really learnt anything thus far and will need to assemble something that's actually correct rather than the crap that the professor hands out and calls notes. Darn, no mindless note-typing for me.
• MD assignment.
• Analytical assignment - half done, other half dangling uncomfortably like an inappropriately placed modifier (boo, circuits). (Done)
• Inorganic readings - term symbols and microstates. I *should* know this but I don't, so readings are needed. (Done)
• More readings: bioinorganic this time. I think I'll go annoy the professor about some stuff. Again. (Papers read. Textbook not read. Still need to bug prof.)
• At least *think* about starting the analytical final poster.
• Likewise, think about: bioinorganic final talk, molecular dynamics final talk. But these, along with the previous bullet, will probably have to wait until after all midterms are done

So far my analytical and inorganic professors are amazingly patient with me. I literally follow them around after lectures and bug them with random questions; it's surprising that they respond to me at all. On the other hand, I think my quantum professor hates me for some reason. Can't imagine why :P .

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This is why you shouldn't do homework two days before it's due

My molecular dynamics simulations are being contrary. As in "contrary to what is known about molecular dynamics".

Suppose you have a particle (or two, or n) and you set it loose under some classical set of forces. You do this by calculating the position, velocity, and acceleration of the particle(s) at regular intervals (timesteps) iteratively: use the previous set of information to calculate the next one (basically, think Taylor series; that's pretty much all it is). Things like average energy can be derived from all this.

I'm pretty sure that the following are true:
1. smaller timesteps = better simulation, in the sense that standard deviations tend to be smaller and you catch "fast" events, but it also means the simulation is slow in some sense
2. the longer the simulation runs, the less it represents reality. Slow events are hard to simulate because of this.

Of course, *my* simulations flew in the face of all this: the larger the time step (until divergence), the smaller the standard deviation. Long simulations (say 2-3 orders of magnitude longer) behave practically the same as short ones.

The worst part is, the code isn't mine. It's given as part of the assignment. Which means it well ought to work, dammit!

Grrr.

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