What I'm Learning

A Test

AJ — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:30:43 +0000

This is a test to learning WordPress and figuring out how to have co-authors.

What happens if I use another account to edit this post? Will I be credited?

Reading PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript

AJ — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 05:35:58 +0000

I’m reading this book almost cover to cover. It is so good, yet I fear I have not the inclination to practice, that I wonder if it’s worth purchasing.

Inorganic Chemistry

AJ — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:14:04 +0000

I am currently taking the second quarter of Inorganic Chemistry. This is where things are getting difficult. The first quarter was more like an review of things I learned in General Chemistry, with perhaps additional details that I hadn’t known before, but all that the context of learning Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Quantum Chemistry, and Analytical Chemistry helped to form the foundation for them. I see why it is a capstone course.

I have often wondered whether to call myself a chemist or a biochemist. Lately, I can’t say I am fully either. I am probably more of a biochemist than a chemist, and yet I am taking classes that are more chemical than biochemical. And I like those classes more. I thought I wouldn’t like Inorganic Chemistry when I saw it in my first year, but now I regret not taking it earlier. It would have been much more interesting than re-taking biochemistry.

ecstasy

AJ — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:02:35 +0000

His hotness consumed me. I delighted in his very presence, which I acknowledged with every faculty available to me–my eyes, my nose, my hands, my tongue–all of them delighted in his body, which was the source of happiness and ecstasy to me. Words alone cannot describe the experience.

AJ — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:25:00 +0000

There was he. His grace was beautiful. I could imagine when he walked in, that I would solely focused on his face, as if he was jaded. Walking barefoot, I saw his toes clutching the carpet gingerly. The body hair was barely visible, but some tufts on his legs and arms. His chest was devoid of hair. His eyes changed color with different lights. Sometimes hazel, sometimes gray, sometimes a shocking azure blue that leaves me trapped, as if I was being studied. His hair was like his eyes, also shifting color between light blond and dark brown. It was most of all a dirty lock, shaggy as the youth once independent, fierce, and wild, and now manifest in a sort of subdued , yet not subdued, a look that says he will play with whoever gives him the time of day. It is a look that he will have died but Death loved him too much to make him pass before his time. Or perhaps Death has not notice him yet.

today

AJ — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:05:47 +0000

I titered P1 vir on AB1157 1:100 and then 1:50 to see if I can get enough viral growth to make a lysate.

So I am about to finish math

AJ — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 07:48:00 +0000

My friends, I am about to finish Discrete Structures, using a book that is focused on algorithms.

I am excited, my friends, to be close to done with school.

I am somewhat annoyed at the propensity of spam coming up here. I am not sure how to prevent that.

FOSS and patches

AJ — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:03:46 +0000

Something that explains better than I did:

Corporate IT staff frequently do not immediately patch their critical software until they know what the patch will actually do and that it will not cause other problems or expose other vulnerabilities. Apple’s distributing of FOSS patches to its commercial customers requires a similar delay. FOSS projects can blow out patches fast and furiously, but Apple can’t or we’d all be annoyed to see patch updates in Software Update on a daily basis. Apple’s commercial customers demand software that “just works,” which requires a very different approach to version management than the “do it yourself” model in the Linux world.

As we know, Firefox is a FOSS project, so it must update furiously because it is open source: Vulnerabilities are too well-known to be left unpatched, but this means that users are sometimes frequently annoyed by pop-up boxes telling them to upgrade. This stands in contrast with Apple’s secretiveness, allowing it to release updates in less hectic intervals.

nursing a paper fetish

AJ — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:00:45 +0000

Since your telling me about A4 paper that you adopted, I am become uncharacteristically obsessed, especially for a paper that I will rarely use (since I don’t print much in the first place). I guess it’s the desire to be ahead of the curve of the rest of the US population.

So, I simply looked up more information. I learned that the ISO 216 standard means that you can turn reduce two A4 sheets to fit on one A4 through multiplying by 71%, equivalent to the square root of 2. Thinking it through, I wondered where the heck they came up with the 841 mm by 1189 mm as the A0 sheet. It turned out that there is no other way to maintain the ratio, and that there is a formula for it.

The US could have used yards, and patterned itself similarly. A US A4 standard would then be 7.6″ by 10.7″. That is quite small. The metric system is larger, 84.1 cm and 29.6 cm. If the US decided to keep one of the two dimensions, but have the other fit the sqrt(2) paradigm, then you could have a 7.8″ width or a 12″ width.

users and groups in ubuntu

AJ — Sun, 20 May 2007 08:21:28 +0000

In Users and Group under System -> Administration:

Click Manage Groups, click whichever group you would like to make users for, or add a new group.

When you have done so, be sure to log on and in for the new setting to take effect before trying to use chmod 774 and getting frustrated that you can’t edit a file despite adding your username to the group.