Linux. Just...Linux.

Have I ever mentioned how much I detest Linux, the open-source operating system? Probably not, but there's no time like the present to start. There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or all the tongues of Men for this blot on the good name of the human race. A typical session of attempting to install something goes like this:

1. Download various packages and files.
2. Begin following instructions provided, typing in arcane and arbitrary commands at the terminal. (If you have no instructions, you are basically out of luck.)
3. If you're lucky, it will take more than 2 commands before you encounter an error.
4. Spend anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours surfing the web trying to find out exactly what additional sequence or combination of arcane and arbitrary commands you need to type in to fix the error. Typically these will be scattered across several forum threads a few years in age, and must be pieced together with a care rivaling that of a linguist deciphering Linear B.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until you either (miraculously, miracles DO still happen) finish the installation, or realize there are better uses of your time, like counting the number of sand grains on the nearest beach, or watching paint curl.

Linux is like the Gnosticism of computers, as it requires "mystic, revealed, esoteric knowledge", which can only be received from someone who's been working with computers practically since they were invented. As one of the professors here at school put it, "Linux has a trillion commands, and it requires you to know them all". There is no way to learn Linux on your own by trial-and-error -- you must rely on someone else telling you what to do. I mean, it's the 21st century already! We have things called graphical user interfaces and self-installing programs (and they DO exist for Linux, as I've used some in the past). So why can't some of the most ubiquitous and important scientific programs (*cough* IRAF *cough*) of our day actually avail themselves of these marvels of modern technology? The abacus is starting to look more and more like a viable and productive alternative!
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(deep breath)
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As you can probably tell, I just spent the last two and a half hours trying to install a package for IRAF on my Ubuntu distribution, with only marginal success. During this time I overcame exactly two Linux errors (along with a good number of human-caused mistakes). And I still can't get the package to work right. I'm beginning to be worried about the increase in my blood pressure. If you ever need a good argument against going into astronomy, it is the fact that IRAF does not run on Windows (or even Mac).

*sigh* Anyway, now that I have sufficiently vented my spleen, I need to get to bed and get my very-much-needed sleep. A hui hou!

Pā‘ina and hula.

Monday night my Hawaiian professor invited the whole class over to his house for a pā‘ina, a small dinner party. It was very enjoyable. He and his family live a couple miles outside of Hilo, out in the good ol’ countryside. Everyone brings food to Hawaiian parties, and we enjoyed an ‘ono (delicious, tasty) meal of many different things. (If you have just enjoyed a savory repast, you can compliment your host with “ ‘ono ka mea‘ai” -- “delicious is the food”.)

We also saw and practiced for the first time the hula we'll be learning over the semester. Hula is an art form unique to the Hawaiian islands, and can be loosely described as a highly stylized form of pantomime accompanied by a mele, a song that may be chanted or sung depending on the hula. It was originally conceived as a means of passing on oral histories, and developed into an ubiquitous art form applicable to social situations ranging from serious state occasions to informal get-togethers. The mele we're performing is sort of a patriotic Hawaiian anthem, though a relatively recent one. Hula is incredibly complex and difficult, especially for such an uncoordinated one as I. There are foot, hand, and arm movements to be performed synchronously with the mele, while singing and trying not to hit or run into the people around you. It's a very different experience for me, but a very pleasant one. (Yes, I know, another shocker to those of you who know I am generally not much for the performing arts. All I can say is, I'm surprised too.) I'll try to translate the mele for you later on in the semester when I'm able, and perhaps even put up some pictures from when we perform.

A hui hou! (until next time!)

Random errata (is that redundant?)

Ouch. You know what hurts worse than walking a mile uphill to school while sore all over? Walking a mile downhill from school while sore all over. I don't pretend to know the muscles involved, but it hurts a lot more going in a downward direction. (Thus providing more support for my firm belief that it's going downhill that's the hard part; going uphill is a snap, comparatively. At least, it is for me. I've only met a few people that agree with me on this point.)

I've blogged before about my love of \(\LaTeX\), the document markup language that takes what you write and makes it look beautiful. While writing my first homework assignment for Thermodynamics this morning, I stumbled upon a cool package for it that let you write chemical formulae and equations simply and naturally. Alas, despite my best efforts, I was unable to install it because of the exceedingly simple fact that the program was looking online for a repository with the .tar.bz2 extension, while the actual repository had the .tar.lzma extension (it took me over an hour to find this out, after trying every conceivable way to manually install it). Needless to say, I was bit bummed, as it would have reduced the work needed to write CO\(_2\) everywhere it would be needed in the paper. (In case you're wondering, \(\LaTeX\) can handle writing CO\(_2\) just fine, it just means an extra couple of commands each time I want to write it.)

Tonight my Hawaiian teacher is having our class over for a party, so I made cookies to take. Hooray for cookie sheets! My cooking repertoire is vastly improved now that I have some. And hot-pads to handle them with, too.

Futbol.

Saturday afternoon I enjoyed a game of soccer with my housemates Josh and Jonathan and some other people from school and the BCM. Yes, I enjoyed it. I know that will be a surprise to those of you who know I have historically disliked playing sports. Indeed, I am now sore in pretty much every muscle of my body. I am a little surprised myself. Still...on the off chance I don't get enough exercise walking ten miles to and from school each week, I may take advantage of the chance to work up an even bigger sweat now and then.

New classes, new teachers, a new semester.

Once again, a new semester of college begins, a time of new classes and new things to learn. I must confess, it is not busyness that kept me from posting this week, I simply haven't felt like it. Part of that was that I didn't want to write about my classes without seeing how they were going. Having completed my first week of classes now, I can say that this semester looks like it will be as I planned: a lot easier than last semester.

For those who are interested, I'm taking Thermodynamics, Optics, Galaxy Evolution and Data Reduction, Stellar Astrophysics, Hawaiian 101, and Physical Sciences Seminar, for a mere seventeen credits. I feel a little strange as this is the first semester since I started college, three years ago, that I don't have a math class. That should mean an easier semester for me, allowing me to continue to work with Dr. Takamiya on her research project.

Other than that, not much to say...little homework to speak of yet, but I'm sure that will change in the next week or two.

A hui hou! (till next time!)

Sleep and school (not together, mind you).

It is an interesting detail I've noticed that the mere fact of having a bed raised some distance above the ground makes it easier to get up in the morning. I'm not sure why this is so, but I theorize it has something to do with having some potential energy in the morning, rather than having to haul yourself out of bed completely on your own strength. It also seems to produce more restful sleep, though again I'm not sure why. Of course, this will come in very handy with school starting on Monday, a fact I'm still having trouble impressing on my mind.

Epinephrine, or: How to REALLY throw off your sleep cycle.

Have you ever had the experience where you're quietly falling asleep, just about to drift off, and something startles you violently awake? Imagine that "something" being a three-and-a-half-inch centipede crawling in your hair, and you have my night last night.

I'm very, very thankful that in my sleep induced stupor I didn't put my hand to my head to see what it was. I am also, for the first time, thankful that my bedside clock puts out so much light -- normally it keeps me awake, but I was really happy to have it last night, as I turned my head to see a long black form crawling over my pillow.

That's when the adrenaline kicked in. Hard.

I'll spare you the details of how I finally evicted the critter from my bed, and killed it after many repeated shoe-smashing attempts, and simply note that it is nigh impossible to sleep on a pallet on the floor in the dark with adrenaline coursing through your veins. This was made all the more ironic because I specifically went to bed early last night to catch up on my sleep, instead waking up this morning feeling even more groggy than usual after a night of uneasy dreams. (Adrenaline is also know as epinephrine, by the way, hence the title.)

As of right now, my pallet is now up on a nice folding camp bed I found at Wal-mart (cheaper than making my own out of cinder block and 2-by-12's...yes, I checked. And more convenient, too). I'd heard from other people that the centipedes here were something else, but this is the first time I've actually seen one (fittingly enough, on the anniversary of the first day I arrived here).

Mean Weekly Victual Cost™ (MWVC)

Well, yesterday marks the first time I have spent more than a hundred dollars in one grocery store run. It's a bit special for me, because I've been priding myself on keeping it below a hundred dollars each trip, despite the high cost of food here. Mostly it was so high because I was restocking on necessaries now that I'm back from California, though I did cave to a few luxury items (Parmesan cheese is expensive...and milk! Gallon for gallon, it's worth more than gas in California. You'd think they have to pump it out of the ground or something).

On a whim, I went through all my receipts over the last semester, and figured out how much I spent on food, then normalized it by the number of weeks in the semester to figure out my Mean Weekly Victual Cost (MWVC). While the total figure took my breath away ($850.73), my MWVC looked a lot better: a mere $36.99. That's right, I can feed myself happily for less than $37 a week. In fact, I could probably feed myself contentedly for a lot less than that, since I could admittedly have gone without certain beverages (and after getting two cavities filled over vacation, I'll be cutting back on them quite a bit this semester!).

I did the same thing for the previous semester, and while I don't remember the exact figure I know it was between $40 and $50, so I'm getting a little bit thriftier. The challenge is on, now...I shall do the same thing this semester, and see if I can't lower my MWVC even more.

Oh, and don't forget to vote in the poll!

On the difference between quantum and classical belts.

While I was back in California, I switched my well-worn quantum belt of many years for a new, classical one. When I say "classical" I am not talking about Greco-Roman styles, since I'm pretty sure the belts those guys used were of the quantum variety. Confused? "Quantum" and "classical" refer to two modes of thought in physics, depending on whether or not something comes in discrete units, or is infinitely sub-divisible. We know, by many experiments, that we live in a quantum world. Electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom cannot have just any energy they like. There are very specific energy levels they must stay at, and they can only jump between them by giving or receiving exactly as much energy is required to make up the difference between the levels they jump. However, in our everyday ordinary affairs, the world doesn't seem at all quantized. On macroscopic levels, we rarely encounter quantum effects (one of the few readily accessible is the laser, which works on quantum principles). We don't experience things moving in quantized jumps, so it is no wonder, then, that early physicists took the world at face value, giving us classical physics based on experience. The non-intuitive quantized description of the microscopic world took a long time to develop and acquire enough evidence to convince the general scientific community (starting around the beginning of the 20^th century, and developing throughout the rest of it).

What does this have to do with belts, you ask? Well...most belts are quantized in such a way that you can only adjust them in discrete increments. This is sometimes a problem (especially for me, who always seems to fall somewhere between two holes). The belt I got works by friction, and can be adjusted, for all intents and purposes, to any size I want. Thus, I have passed from a quantum to a classical belt.

Oh, and to deflect attention from my lame physics joke (it sounded better in my head, I promise), I've put up a new poll! I originally intended to have a new poll every week or two, but couldn't think of questions to ask and then kind of forgot about it. I'm just curious how frequently people check in to see if I've written anything new. I know, I've been pretty bad about updating the last few weeks while on vacation, but I'm back now! I'll try to put something fresh up here every couple of days.

Encounters of the statistically-improbable kind.

Well, I made it safely back to Hawai`i last night after three separate flights and 11 hours of traveling. I got to fly through Kahului airport on Maui on my way in, which was nice. I only wish I didn't have to go west to Honolulu and back east of Hilo after that. (Interestingly, looking up at Haleakalā, the volcanic mountain that makes up the east side of Maui, from the airport reminds me of looking up at a mirror-reversed image of Mauna Kea from Hilo; they both have small mounds on their flanks that look similar, and nearly matching coloration patterns. Of course, a close inspection reveals many differences, but they are remarkable look-alikes, at least from the perspectives I mentioned.)

On getting in to Hilo, I had the fastest encounter with the baggage carousel I've ever had. I'd hardly been standing waiting for 30 seconds when first one, then both of my bags popped out on the track. I had them off, and was walking away in under a minute. I guess I've flown on airplanes enough in my life that such a statistical anomaly was bound to strike eventually.

All in all, it went smoothly, and I can now buckle down to prepare for the semester. (First order of business, finding another class to take in place of the Quantum Mechanics class I was going to take that got canceled due to lack of enrollment...)