First Day

After a whole month of bumming around, I started doing something productive with my time. Yeah yeah some will say 1 month break after graduating is too short, but given my circumstances with Immigration Canada and the fact I would get deported by September if I do not find something to do, I do not have the privelege most graduates have of taking the summer or anytime off.
So today was my first day at work in ITB. I am working on the flight simulator project and have to get it setup and working. The job requires some knowledge about control systems which I have learned about in 4th and 5th year, but that is not required until a little bit later. Today I just had to setup a small 4 computer network and get Linux running on them. That was almsot done today except for one which for some reason never detected the keyboard. I had to wait until around 4pm when I got a USB keyboard which might work. I decided to leave the test until tomorrow as there was not enough time.
Now back to the computer problem I was having, after opening it up it was definitely a problem with the connector which I cannot fix, so I took it to a computer store and I was told labor is going to cost $120 to fix it + pieces..coming to a grand total of $180!!! I was worried about that because when I opened the laptop, the connector piece on the motherboard was covered with a plastic cover that cannot be removed. I have no idea how they will do it. I am going to call HP tomorrow to find out how much it will cost to fix it there...but $200 is rediculous..given that on eBay the selling price is around $550 for my laptop now..I might as well just sell it..hmm maybe I can find out if the store would buy it...
Anyway, I dont have access to the flight sim room yet, as it is still being rebuilt because they had to break the walls to get in...remember? I will post pics as soon as I take them!

Merapi - Mountain of Fire

I was reading the news on BBC and they had this article about a volcano in Indonesia - Merapi, meaning Mountain of Fire! Although I hear they are dangerous, and clearly it is, witnessing a volcano erupting is one of the things I would hope to once witness with my eyes - and not on TV. The list also includes:

• seeing a tornado
• earthquake
• flood

An experience is an experience, and living through a natural disaster and seeing what others all over the world suffer -sometimes on a daily basis- is one real experience.

So that articles goes on and talks about how scientists cannot yet tell when a volcano is going to errupt. Shouldnt this be a top research concern in that area? Especially since the Asian Ring of Fire is located there and Indonesia has 129 active volcanoes. What is so hard about predicting? Scientists can predict the weather, are they trying to say that with all these super computers in the world, nobody can find a way to predict when a volcano will errupt? Even if the prediction was off by a week or even a month, that is still way better than living not knowing when the place will be flooded with red hot molten lava! Did you know that lava can flow 40km before it stops, and then a mud slide continues until 80km - that is almost the distance from Hamilton to Toronto! So why can't they predict? Maybe the hard part is measuring the force of the lava building up inside the volcano, but afer that what is the problem? A solution to this is one thing scientists should be working on and definitely not bunker buster bombs like some scientists are busy doing...

Bad things happen to good people

Nothing sucks more than when your computer just breaks down out of the blue! For some reason the power cable or perhaps the power supply, or maybe some internal wiring inside the laptop has failed and now its like I am playing blackjack trying to get the laptop connected and charging. So now I am using my powerbook which is great, but the only problem is that for some reason it cannot pick up the wireless signal in my room so I have to sit in the living room. I took apart the laptop hopinh to magically be able to tell what is exactly wrong but couldnt. It took some time to take out all the screws that hold down the cover, just because I had to look through my toolbox for the right screwhead. So after taking it off I find everything inside is almost WELDED together! and I cannot get to the power supply. Anyway enough complaining. I am going to hunt for a power cable on eBay. I hope that is whats wrong.

The Davinci Code is one hell of a book...

So I just finnished reading this book and its by far the best 500 pages I have ever read. I have not read many novels before because most of the time I just lose interest, but this one just got better every chapter. The story had a very interesting twist of events that was completely unexpected and just left me super impressed with Dan Brown's novel.

I cannot wait until I go see the movie when it comes out May 19. I do not recall me saying this phrase about any movie about a novel ever in my life!

Picasa2

I just downloaded Picasa2 by Google and it is a photo organizer. Really neat application plus it gives you the ability to blog your photos on eBlogger right from the application. That is what I am doing right now and I decided to choose a photo of Athena taken on March 18 2006.


Athena is Team 4's autonomous search and rescue robot designed for our capstone course SE 4G06. Athena was one of the few robots to not use any rotation sensors and is almost completely dependent on the environment changes around it. There are a few instances when things were timed but those were timed against the battery level so changes in that would not drastically affect the robot's movements.

In the actual race Athena tied for first place, but really we were ahead by 1 sec although the judges gave the other team the benefit of the doubt and decided to make it a tie. Unfortunately coming in first does not mean you have the best robot. I can admit that Team 6's Tortoise was the best robot produced. That robot CANNOT get stuck and they had a very impressive presentation proving that. Based on four rules, Tortoise can always navigate itself out of troubles. Tortoise did not win the race, yet it did win the competition and they more than deserved it. So the morale is - Slow and easy wins your thesis competition

Time to work!

Today I signed my first contract as an Engineer! I spoke too soon when I said I was done with school last month. Now I am on contract with Computing and Software at McMaste University as a Research Assistant. The project is that flight simulator I mentioned earlier. I showed my friend Kaelan the machine and she was confused because it was bigger than she even imagined. I will have pictures of this on Monday when I start work. So this is a 2 month contract until July 14 and should keep me busy. I am more convinced of pursuing grad school now, and I am hoping I will find out about the funding very soon.

I shall have pictures of the cockpit soon. This shall be one really well documented projected.

Phi...the divine proportion, golden ratio, golden section, goldean mean, Fibonacci series, whatever you want to call it.

So I am reading The Davinci Code and came across this interesting concept. The number 1.618. Apparently scholars throughout time have came to an agreement that the number 1.618 is a divine number for several reasons. While doing my bachelors I took this course "Nonlinear Optimization". It mentioned this number Phi and how it can be used.
Phi is calculated by solving

x^2-x-1=0

for "x" and after many iterations it converges to 1.618. So anyway back to the point, why it so interesting? Some of these reasons you may be able to test out for yourself.

First a little history. Why was the Greek letter Phi chosen? It was first closely studied by a Greek scultptor called Phidias and as a result was given the name Phi.

Throughout time this number was used for many purposed. It seems like it envokes a certain emotion within humans. A lot of artists use this number in their designs and paintaings. Whenever balance is an issue, somehow the number 1.618 was the balance in any art.

So why was it said to be divine?
1. After reading this, I tried it out and surprisingly it came within .018 of 1.618 - probably due to measurement error.
The Golden Section, also known as Phi, is manifested in the structure of the human body. If the length of the hand has the value of 1, for instance, then the combined length of hand + forearm has the approximate value of Phi. Similarly the proportion of upper arm to hand + forearm is in the same ratio of 1: Phi . Coincidence?

2- Also if you measure your height, and then measure the height between your belly button and your feet, the ratio is 1:Phi again.

3- Several other examples were mentioned, the ratio of the radius of spirals to each in a seashell is 1:Phi, the ratio of distances between leaves on a twig is 1:Phi.

4- In university, or highschool if you ever came across the Fibonacci numbers, you were probably introduced to them as the quantities of rabbits reproducing:
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...
So starting with 2 rabbits, they reproduce, now you have 3, more reproduction, now you got 5, and so on...
Well apparently this is not just an academic exercise, a lot of plants, organisms, creatures reproduce or produce new quantities at this rate. Coincidence?

5-Even the UN Building they say exhibits this phenomenon.

Since it all started with "x^2-x-1=0" I think it is all just a mathematical trick within solving that equation. Something to do with the "1" since that means "x^2-x=1",1 as in a whole. If you figure out the trick then please comment and let me know!

Baffled Nael Signing Out