davidnhBlog

Rolling to an end

2009-08-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

In one week I move apartments and I've been reflecting over the past year. A year ago, a whole year, Mum and Dad were here at my graduation and then to help me move in to Ithaca. Time goes a little too fast for my liking, but it goes at precisely the speed it means to so I shouldn't complain.

A lot has happened, big significant unanticipated stuff. Good stuff, not so good stuff, interesting stuff, fun stuff. That's a lot of stuff. For example, one of the YSA passed away in a car accident, stellar guy and engaged to be married to another YSA in the branch. We dealt with the aftermath. What else? ... I found out that I'm not as smart as I may have previously believed, after leaving BYU and entering the 'real world' of academia and grad school. I found that I can choose my outlook on life and can be miserable and lonely or happy and looking for great things to do with my life. I found that even if your calling takes time away from other things in your life, sometimes it's the only worthwhile thing to be doing with that time anyway. I found that priorities are everything. I woke up with a mouse on my chest, ..yeah that's probably the only time in my life that's going to happen. I've taken in two guys as roommates whose wives left them this year and learned a great deal from them. I've had another roommate get engaged which is always a happy time but you can't help thinking "why not me?" :-) My grandmother passed away, and I've been remembering going to play at her house when younger, family reunions, her kind nature and love of poetry. I've grown appreciative of other worldviews including that of the typical Ithaca hippie, without becoming a hippie myself. I've found more clearly what it means to believe in Jesus Christ and the Restoration. I've learned that by myself I can't really ever do very much and that is why I take comfort in the fact that taken together, we can do more and more. I've gained more of an appreciation for poetry and kiteboarding and missionary work and other such related things.

The garden is doing well but I think the most important thing it's given me is an appreciation for the Economiracle of modern days. i.e. an appreciation for not having to go and grow my own food but just to have it magically appear, fresh, each week in the supermarket. I don't think I will do it next year but I will do it in the future when I have a place and family of my own because I think it has a lot left to teach me. I just recently had the thought that that field is so packed with seeds of all kinds, from being farmed in little plots by enthusiastic students for so many years, that probably in Autumn I can just wander down the aisles between the plots and pick more vegetables than my garden will ever have!

OK so that was really a very random mix of things, but I am grateful for this year and the better person I have become. Bring on the new school year I say!

And finally, an ode to the lil mouse who just wanted a little companionship on that cold night. And I, I show'd nary any mercy to ye little trem'ling whiskers. Sorry lil beastie, and may ye rest in peacie.

---

"Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

"I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
What makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

"I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!"

-- Robert Burns, To A Mouse

Lab pics, and Sun School

2009-07-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some pics of one of my labs. (The other lab is the cleanroom which is a large shared lab where we make little things using the same technology they use to make computer chips from silicon.)

That's an optical table which is a table that floats on a cushion of air to reduce vibrations.

The setup above is one of two on the table for getting infrared light into and out of silicon tubes called waveguides. This one comes in from the side of the silicon chip (chip not shown but it goes between the brass-coloured optical fiber holder to the left and the silver barrel thing to the right (which is a lens stack). The black thing above is an infrared microscope). The other setup allows us to bring light in and collect it again from above, instead of into and out of the side (edge) of the chip.

Successfully getting light into and out of these things is relatively hard, and one of the biggest reasons "microphotonics" is virtually unknown in industry whereas "microelectronics" is everywhere. I say relatively hard because sending some electrons into some micro-scale wires is as easy as connecting it, whereas sending light into a waveguide incurs losses and difficult questions of integration, repeatability, and robustness. However it is quite do-able on a small research-lab scale like this.

This is something I have almost finished putting together. It uses lasers (not shown) to optically excite and optically detect micromechanical resonators.

I'll probably talk more about these setups and how they actually work in future posts.

In other news, I gave a Sunday School lesson today and I prepared the least I've ever prepared for a lesson. It was probably 5 minutes of preparation because I forgot about it until the night before and then got back at 2am. In the morning my printer was out of ink so I couldn't print it off and ended up taking my laptop to read off while teaching. In short, by all indications it should have been a terrible lesson but in fact it was one of the best I've taught in terms of class interest and interactivity. It was about reasons that people sometimes give for personal apostasy and ways to strengthen yourselves against that. (Lesson 24 in SS manual.) Despite the lack of preparation or thought while teaching I really did notice and feel helped by the Spirit in knowing what to say. I remember, as I was teaching, thinking it was strange that I should be helped to teach when I hadn't helped myself. I mean, I could have made myself remember it earlier so I wasn't so rushed, or I could have stayed up at 2am on Saturday night when I got home to prepare it but I was lazy so I didn't.

After the meeting I went to Elder's Quorum but Pres Horrocks called me aside and said with teary eyes "I don't know how it turned out that you were supposed to teach that today but I know there were at least two church members in that room that I've been meeting with needed to hear that, and you said exactly the right things at the right time. And now I have to email them and tell them that I had absolutely nothing to do with choosing that lesson in case they think I did!"

I learned a couple of things from that. First, as I felt words put in my mouth it was a testimony of the truth of the gospel and the willingness of our Heavenly Father to intervene in our lives (I'm speaking of the lives of those sitting in on the class, not so much myself). Secondly, it felt good to actually know that something I did made a difference somewhere because I generally I don't feel that in my life. I do research in my little corner of physics, unbeknown to most of earth's six billion, and not often seeing the result of any differences I may make in other's lives. We may make large differences to those around us through what we say or do, but don't often recognize the difference we make, so don't appreciate it. So it was refreshing to realize that I may have been part of helping someone today.

Gender confusion

2009-06-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

Got this email from Cornell's Payroll Office:

"...If you are receiving this email it is because we have been advised by the Social Security Administration that their data on your gender is different from what Cornell has for your gender. Cornell has your gender as Male..."

So I wrote back:

"How should I contact the SSA in order to ensure my gender registered with them is, in fact, male? I am and have always been male. This is quite funny."

I was told I had to go to Ithaca's Social Security Administration office. The first time I went I brought everything but my I-20 so had to come back another day. The second time I went the lady said I also needed a letter from my dept proving that I was in fact employed by them. The third time I went back I was able to get it changed, and for some reason they had to send me a new Social Security Card (even though it's identical to my old one). I don't know why they couldn't just look at me and change their records.

The funniest part is that I have had my Social Security Card since 2001, so the US government has thought I was female that whole time.

Kiteboarding, duelling bulletin boards

2009-06-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

First things first, the next (and last) three PhD Comics in that series: here, here, and here. I especially like the first one, so true to life.

Also, I promised photos of my experiments but forgot to take them. So next time.

Yesterday planted a lot of stuff in the garden and then went kiteboarding for a few hours. Only really the second time I've been but was a hang of a lot of fun. Mostly just did "body-dragging" which is where you practice doing a "power stroke" (bringing the kite down into a place where it has a lot of pulling power) and letting yourself get dragged behind it. There were five of us out there but I couldn't really get a good photo with more than two kites in it, so this will have to do for now:

It's awesome holding something with the power to lift you up and drag you along, but being able to control it. I could feel it becoming more of a direct control towards the end of the day (by which I mean that you're no longer thinking about how to move the bar to do something but you're just willing the kite to go somewhere and it goes).

One other hilarious thing that made my day was this bulletin board duel--for all those awesome carnivores out there.

Back in US

2009-06-21T20:23:00.000-07:00

Haven't written in a while, been in NZ. Come back to find more signs of mice under the sink, so no more Mr. Nice Guy for them. Couldn't go to do any gardening yesterday because it was raining hard, but will go next Sat. The others who are sharing my plot say my potatoes are coming up nicely. No idea when I'm supposed to dig them up so it's great we have wikipedia, I'll have to look that up.

The latest PhD Comic (leadup: here and here, and latest one here) made me laugh because it was much like when the BYU photographers came to take a photo once. They brought all this fancy lighting gear and then asked me to show them all the labs so they could find a good spot. I showed them the labs where I did most of my work and then since they were down in the underground lab I showed them the TEM which is an impressive looking tower of a microscope. They weren't impressed until that point and instantly they said, "This is it! This is where we'll take the photo." I started to protest that I didn't actually use the TEM in my research, that I'd only used it maybe twice after getting trained on it, but they wouldn't have any of it and that's where they took the picture! And then they spent at least half an hour taking just one photo (well actually they took like 30 photos but they were all of the same thing, with the lighting coming from various angles etc). Similarly it makes me laugh whenever I see a picture of a science lab in a popular magazines or a newspaper and there's usually someone wearing a lab coat (even in a physics/engineering lab, where nobody ever wears lab coats) bending over a strange piece of equipment with some eerie green light shining from below. Anyway, in the next post, expect some (very unofficial, non-eerily lighted) pictures of the two setups on the optical table that I have been setting up recently!

2009-05-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

Mindi, Tiffany, and I put up a fence around our plot and are ready to dig and plant it now. The soil may require some work because when I first saw it a few weeks ago they had just ploughed the field and it was nice and aerated, but now it's more packed down and is about 50% covered in some kind of broad-leaf plant. However it doesn't matter, we're on our way now! Oh, except that I go to NZ soon and don't know how much the others plan to do while I'm gone. (Tiffany, Shoojian, Mindi, Hillary and Jonathan, are all sharing in the plot.)

I haven't posted in a while.. had finals and research deadlines. Got some good results in research, nothing publishable, just laying down the roots. I'm making some little things that take light from an optical fiber (like the ones internet information gets carried on) and put it onto a silicon chip (like the ones computer chips get made on). This has been done before so I'm just figuring out how to do it so we can use that for cooler things later on..

That's one of the grating couplers (the triangle thing) and the straight and squiggly lines are little solid silicon pipes that the light goes down. It's written in an electron-sensitive polymer with an electron beam, and then chemicals or dry plasmas are used to etch the silicon. The whole thing is attached to the underlying glass. The idea is that you cleanly cleave a big optical fiber and then bring it in from above, at the correct angle, and the light coming from it will see the grating and due to some wonderous mathematical laws that it must follow, that light wave will see the grating and change direction, to be launched down the triangle into the skinny waveguide. Now that this is working (as well as anyone else in the world has really made it work, which is not very good.. you lose 99% of the light every time you go in or out through one of these gratings) we can do some cool things with the light inside the waveguides. Stay tuned (though it may be months, so don't hold your breath..! Nothing happens on the timescale of minutes in research).

For scale, the width of the picture is about the width of a human hair..

Garden plot, summer research, young whippersnappers

2009-05-03T11:19:00.000-07:00

There she is, the little plot of land that will feed me in late summer. I hope. As long as I can keep the deer out. (Unfortunately it's right on the edge next to the trees so it's more likely to be attacked by deer than one in the middle.) That second photo shows the whole plot of land I got for $18. Way more than I could use. The first photo is just a long shot showing some other people's plots in the foreground. I'm thinking rhubarb, beans, carrots, lettuce, peas, and potatoes seem easy (according to http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gardening/homegardening/) and I kind of want to grow sunflowers (without a doubt the manliest flower). A few people have asked me if they can help and of course I'm happy for the help and companionship, so watch this space as I detail my gardening adventures over these next few months.

Also, I'm staying with this group in Elec Engineering for the summer and probably for the rest of my PhD. If all the options were on the table at once it wouldn't have taken so long but I had to keep waiting to meet advisors, and waiting for them to figure out if they had funding etc. In the end, unfortunately the few *really* interesting advisors all said no (apparently some of those have to turn away 10-15 students a year so I didn't take it personally), and I had two main options for groups I thought were interesting and had funding. One was Bob Buhrman's group and one was Sunil's group. In the end, Sunil's group just felt like the best option so I went with it.

So I went to the CES fireside tonight. I remember when growing up, snickering at older people who didn't know what youtube or Google was. Now it's my turn... I must be getting old. Elder Bednar talked at length about SecondLife, an online world where you meet people etc, and I'd never heard of it. Like, never. Pretty soon those young whippersnappers will be laughing at me, if they're not already.

Humans: 1, Meese: 1

2009-04-27T20:39:00.001-07:00

The mice get a point for being smart and not bugging us anymore. There seems to have been only that one mouse, and that one may have just wandered in a few days ago when we left the outside door open a crack.

In other news, Cornell allows you to rent out a garden plot for the summer for $18, so I thought why not? I don't have a lot of time but I hope to plant some things that don't take too much time or care. I'll go and check out the site soon and post a photo here. Any suggestions for what to grow? It needs to be edible by October, which is how long I have the plot for (even though nobody uses them over the winter you can't grow perennials because you can't guarantee you'll get the same plot next year).

Humans: 1, Meese: 0

2009-04-24T19:05:00.001-07:00

It's on. Man vs. mouse. Two days ago I went and bought a few mousetraps. Yesterday morning when we awoke we found that we had caught a mouse. This morning when I awoke, the traps were still empty. I'm leaving them out for several more days--there ain't gonna be no more mice running across my chest! They're no match for our arsenal of d-CON brand No View No Touch(TM) Mouse Traps.

Mouse Wars

2009-04-22T06:18:00.001-07:00

I awoke this morning with a mouse on my chest. No, really---literally running across my chest. I'd seen a mouse once before in my apartment but that also happened to be the morning after someone had inadvertently left the front door to our apartment ajar, and since I hadn't seen signs of mice before, I dismissed it until there was more proof of a mouse infestation. I wanted proof; I got proof this morning. Let the war begin.

Back to normalcy . . . and a lot to learn ahead

2009-04-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

These last few weeks have been pretty bad for me because I've been deciding what research group to join and have been agonizing over the decision. Some of the factors have been hard to grapple with, like which group would give me a better scientific training or set me up better for the postdoc/job I want at the end of it, and some factors have been quite shallow, such as which professor is more well-known or better funded. (These latter things can certainly have an influence on how enjoyable your grad experience is and how easy it is to find postgraduate positions in good labs elsewhere.)

However today I think it has finally come together. I'll be working on a project between two groups (making an electrical readout system for a mechanically resonating graphene sheet or nanotube). One group will be paying me and they have the RF MEMS (radiofreq microelectromechanical systems) and RF circuits knowledge, and also have good funding (being electrical engineers). The other group is in physics---they have good graphene and nanotube knowledge, and they are doing cutting-edge things in that field. I hope that by keeping my foot in the physics door (and in particular in the graphene door, which is arguably the hottest thing in physics today), I can go through my Ph.D. without "losing my soul" to engineering. While making and testing this readout system I hope to learn graphene processing techniques and meet people with ideas about possible future graphene collaborations.

Anyway, that was a lot of scientific words that you may not care about so much, and there are many other factors involved which I won't bore you with---but the bottom line is that finally, after going back and forth on this for a long time, I think I've reached the best option available to me. So anyway, I hope to post more interesting blogs in the future, stay tuned!

General Conference

2009-04-05T19:46:00.000-07:00

I just watched the 2009 General Conference of my church and got nine pages of notes. A few of my thoughts follow. These are not exact quotes but a mix of paraphrased words and my own thoughts.

Pres. Eyring, Sat morn: Many people view the blessings and good things in their life as something that is deserved or earned, when in fact many times they are just nice bonuses that we don't really deserve. Reminds me a lot of this hilarious video ("Partake in the Miracle of Flight, you non-contributing ZERO!").
Elder someone, Sat afternoon: We have many modern technological miracles which have done much good, but you can't do a Google search to gain a testimony. You can't text message to get faith. The process is the same as it has always been, which is why the gospel is as pertinent today as it has always been.
Elder Rafael D. Pino, Sat afternoon: Quoting someone else: There is no tragedy in death but only in sin. The important thing is not how a man died but how he lived.
Elder someone, first speaker in P'hood sesh: Learn to be content.
Pres. Eyring, P'hood sesh: I love how he paints pictures. One vivid scene he painted was of a battlefield where you hear the cry "Man down!" (i.e. someone is in trouble and needs rescuing). You may be the only one to hear that. You may make excuses: it's not my job / I could be mistaken in thinking that they are in trouble / I don't know their situation so how could I help? etc.
Pres. Uchtdorf, Sun morning: We don't acquire eternal life in a sprint. Too often we are like the famer who plants corn in the morning and expects corn on the cob in the afternoon.
Elder Steven E. Snow, Sun morning: We need to get on with our lives. Many of us do not like large changes, and too often we are uncomfortable with moving to the next phase. Talks about how to prepare for and make changes. Loved his story about the early pioneer who built his life in Salt Lake valley, then asked to go on mission, then came back and built it again, then asked to move to South Utah to start a cotton farm. He took his hat off, spat, scratched his head, put his hat back on, and said "Alright."
Elder Holland, Sun morning: Vivid talk about "The loneliest journey ever made."
Pres. Monson, Sun morning: Be of good cheer: the future is as bright as your faith.
Elder Oaks, Sun afternoon: again talks of greed and the belief of entitlement (that people think they are entitled to things that are not really theirs), harks back to that video posted above.
Elder Watson, Sun afternoon: Gave a must-have quote from Pres. H. B. Lee that I've never heard before.
Elder L. Tom Perry, Sun afternoon: several police cars, fire truck, search and rescue teams, all at the mouth of Provo canyon to rescue a sheep on a cliff! Was I the only one that thought that was hilarious? Well it's not like much really bad stuff goes on in Provo (compared to some other places), perhaps the police were just bored. To see what I mean, BYU Provo's newspaper publishes the most shocking crimes and police stories that occur on campus in a column called the Police Beat, and in general it's funnier than the comics section.

Summer research plans

2009-04-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

I came to grad school thinking, "Grad school will be great! I can go an learn about whatever I want!" but this idea has not proved to be exactly correct yet. I am finding out that unless you came to grad school with the idea that you wanted to work for a specific professor, you end up realizing that your research options are more limited than you thought they were. There aren't a lot of people studying exactly what you want to study, and getting in to their groups can be hit-or-miss. In my case, I started by trying out a group in Electrical Engineering but then wanted to come back to the physics/applied physics department. The EE group would likely turn me into a good engineer but I realized that all along I've wanted to become a good scientist. However there were only a few profs in physics/applied physics who were doing interesting (to me) things, and they didn't have immediate funding.

In particular there is one physics professor who I wanted to work for the most. He taught a lab class I was in and I was really impressed at what a great scientist he seemed to be. He was passionate about science and the ethics of scientific research. He is well known in his field, however, importantly, he doesn't seem like he's trying to be a well-known physicist for the sake of an ego, he's just interested in doing great science and having fun while doing it, and it just so turns out that he has become well-known in the process.

I believe that in this life sometimes you have to be a bit cheeky to get what you want. So when he told me there he couldn't take me on because there was no funding for more students, I kept bugging him over the course of the semester. Not so much trying to be annoying as just trying to show him that I really wanted to be his student. When I came up with the plan for me to TA during the summer (so he wouldn't have to pay me) and then see where things were at in the fall, he thought for a long while and said, "You know, if I didn't like you I would just tell you to go away. What you do over summer is your business but I presume you're doing this with the idea that you'd start doing some things in my lab...?" When I affirmed he said, "You can do that but unfortunately I can't make any promises for the Fall. I think we can find things for you to start doing in my lab over the summer though."

Being in his group would be great but I'm uncertain whether I should leave my current group (where summer and continued funding is assured) in order to try this group out during the summer (where long-term funding might not come thru). Currently I am leaning towards the latter option, because I think the payoff-to-risk ratio is high enough to warrant the risk of him not having funding in the Fall. Plus it's a great way to show him that I'm really committed to being in his group and working hard. So that's the current plan, I'm fasting about it today; we'll see how things turn out in the next couple of weeks.

[photos] Iron Chef 1

2009-03-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

[photos] Iron Chef 2

2009-03-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Iron Chef Ph.D. Candidate

2009-03-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

I have the fun job of organizing the weekly Monday night church activities we hold on campus. Every week we have three things: some kind of lesson or "thought" that someone prepares from the scriptures or their own life, some kind of game or activity which might be learning a new skill, and some kind of food.

I think Mindi, the other organizer, had the idea first, but we had the great idea of having Sister Cook (a missionary that lives here in Ithaca) teach us about cooking. I asked her to give us a few tips about cooking for one (on a student budget) and some ideas for things to make that don't take long. I like good food but my desire for good food is weaker than my desire to NOT sit there stirring something for 20 minutes. So she agreed. You have to understand that Sister Cook is like a grandmother figure to us. She's about that age relative to us, and is so kindly and grandmotherly.

I was expecting a 20 minute lesson about cooking from her, perhaps followed by something she'd made. Boy was I wrong. She and her husband Elder Cook must have spent days preparing the activity for us. We divided into four groups and everybody had something to make and a recipe in front of them. They made it like an "Iron Chef" competition with guest judges and they made us wear these funny hats and call each other by the name printed on our hat: "Iron Chef Broccoli" or "Iron Chef Bacon Quiche". Anyway, buying and preparing the ingredients alone was probably a full day's work. It amazed me that I asked them to go a mile and they went 20 miles.

I've been contrasting that with my attitudes lately. I have felt so overworked and overwhelmed by this Ph.D. thing and being surrounded by people way smarter than me with way clearer ideas of where they're headed, and I have not been responding well. When asked to go a mile that's all I've been doing lately, going a mile and then collapsing exhausted on the side of the road. Certainly the Cooks have more time than me to do the preparation for such an activity, but it's more the attitude I am talking about, rather than the act. Elder Cook was having a ball going around with the microphone, acting as the Iron Chef show host and telling all sorts of jokes. I've had that attitude of enjoyment and cheerful service at times in my life, and need to get back on track. Thanks Cooks for pointing that out!

P.S. Photos follow... or rather, are above this post since that's the way Blogger does it.
P.P.S. I don't know why the number 20 showed up thrice in this post but what can I say? It's a great number.

Food adventure

2009-03-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I helped out with a Stake youth activity in Owego. It was a missionary activity where they learned all about going on missions and did various activities like bike maintenance and learning foreign languages. I was in charge of the "Food Adventure" table where we had them make and eat sushi. I was surprised how many people had never had sushi before. I also wondered again last night why some kids were so adventurous and willing to try new things (eat the sushi), and others would not do it no matter what the reward was. I like to think I was the first kind of kid but can't be sure. Plus I vividly remember refusing to eat certain kinds of food as a kid (in particular mushrooms and meatloaf come to mind) so perhaps I was not as much of the former kind of kid as I want to remember.

However at some point in my late high school years, as best as I can recall I had a "Food Awakening". I remember wondering one day what mushrooms actually tasted like and couldn't recall ever eating one because I always refused them. So I ate one. And it was actually good. I then remember learning that meatballs were the same thing as meatloaf, and I liked meatballs. So I ate meatloaf and liked it. Now I eat anything. Including this computer. I'm trying to hold myself back from eating it.. aargh.. so .. hard..

[photos] More Cornell photos

2009-03-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

[photos] Cornell YSA

2009-03-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

[photos] More BYU

2009-03-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

[photos] BYU and Laugh Out Loud

2009-03-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

Blahhhg

2009-03-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

Blog is an ugly word. Why do we have to call them "blogs"? "Blog" sounds like a combination of "blah" and "blob". With a "g" on the end. "Blah" like the blah you feel after staying up late at night doing homework, and "blob" like the luminescent green, sticky, human-eating kind. (Semitransparent with little bubbles inside.) Neither evoke warm fuzzies.

What shall I call this then, other than a blog? Perhaps I shall call it a pfotgha, but unfortunately nobody would know what I'm talking about. So I must reluctantly stick with "blog."

I was against the idea of a blog for a long time. I saw blogs as unnecessary clutter on the internet, taking up space and getting in the way of important data. But I have since changed my mind, for three reasons. First, search engines are better than ever at giving you what you want. Seven or eight years ago I'd be searching for something and would turn up all these annoying lycos or geocities pages with people who made homepages for Edna, their pet petunia, with of course the requisite arrays of annoying animations and flashing text. Now you don't seem to get too many blogs unless you're looking for them, despite the fact that many more exist. Secondly, ... "waste of space"...? what are we talking about, this is the INTERNET here. It's not like we're paying for the space, or that we ever will. Google must have terabytes upon terabytes of data stored and my webpage will be miniscule and unnoticable except by the people I want to share it with, which is precisely the way I want it. There is so much video/audio streaming now that my words will never amount to much more clutter than the average Joe can upload. And there was a third reason, which was really really good... which I forget.

So I hope that through this blog, those I care about can keep up to date with a bit of where I am and what I'm doing, particularly my family in New Zealand but stalkers are also welcome. I figure that my family in NZ probably don't have any idea what kind of place this is in terms of the countryside, school, etc, so it's probably hard to picture me here, so perhaps a few photos will help, no? Likewise if anyone has blogs, send me links!

Unfortunately, after hearing my blogging motivation and philosophies, you are probably expecting a lot. Unfortunately I don't have much now, just some photos from recent YSA activities and such. But seriously, do you think Picasso started off by drawing the famous "Portrait of Igor Stravinsky"? OK, so maybe he did. But that's not the point.

So, some photos... I've been unable to figure out a good way to post photos with captions, and Picasa won't let me post more than three at once for some reason, so there are a few random photos above, in groups of three. I also couldn't figure out a good way to get the photos to not be in one column with tons of whitespace on either side. But anyway, enough excuses. Also check out the wikipedia page for Cornell to see some nice shots of campus.