Back on the blog!

Not really sure how to explain the lack of posts here. So I won't. Oh well.

Not to get too sappy or anything, but my time with Crusade at NC State is winding down (as is my college career). I honestly can't express the value of the friendships I've built through being involved with Cru, and frankly it's gonna be one of the biggest things about college that will be missed.

Oh, and a new thing I'm going to try to do... since photography (and videography) are increasingly capturing my attention thought it might be fun to throw some stuff related to that up here... so hopefully I'll have a neat picture/video (of my own creation, ideally) to show you each time I post here. To that end... this week's exhibit:

You are looking at a Canon AE-1... wait for it... FILM CAMERA (no, they don't make these anymore), property of one Matt Harris (the lens is a 28mm f2.8 if I'm not mistaken). Went downtown with him and Michael Trautman a few weeks ago to just goof around and see if we could get any good stills/videos, and this one came out pretty well I thought. Used a desaturation brush to take a bit of color out of the bushes in the background and that's about it. And even though I shoot/edit with an autofocus, auto-metering camera there is just something cool about using a manual exposure, manual focus camera. Oh, and manual focusing is hard shooting wide open.

things i am thankful for

in no particular order...

my parents. they drive me crazy sometimes but they're also awesome.

- friends. without them, my life would be incredibly boring. also, i suppose theirs would be as well.
    - sub-heading: ncsu crusade. could almost qualify as an unpaid part-time job with as much as i've done with/through it. loved every minute.

- my camera(s). photography is a concept that intrigues me. you can be the best in the world and still learn stuff every day about it. plus, i get like 5 new desktop wallpapers a week. that's a win-win right there.

- school. yes, i know i rant on a regular basis about how i'm ready to be done with this whole school thing, but i'm able to study at the best university in the state that happens to have one of the oldest & best statistics programs in the country.

- my job. i've been a programming intern at a small contract research organization since may of this year. working there i've grown a lot both personally (figuring out what i want to do with my life) as well as in workplace skills and on the resume (my programming abilities have improved immensely since starting there). plus, they pay me. winning.

- God. (figured that was worth breaking the no-caps rule haha) haven't figured him out yet. probably never will. same goes for figuring out his path for my life. we'll see what happens.

- my macbook. probably either my second or third most valuable electronic possession (behind phone & camera). "it's... 'nuff said!" (bonus points if you know what movie i just quoted)

well that's about all i have right now. i hope you, reader, are also able to find things to be thankful for. after all, that's what thanksgiving is all about anyways. well, that and apparently starting the black friday sales at 9pm thanksgiving night. what the heck, people.

Another night at The Studio...

I'll let these pictures speak for themselves...

Making fun of my major

Just found these online... unfortunately they won't fit into the 140-character limit that Twitter imposes, so here goes!


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Top reasons to be a statistician
-- Estimating parameters is easier than dealing with real life.
-- Statisticians are significant
-- If you've ever wanted to learn the entire Greek alphabet.
-- The probability a statistics major will get a job is > .9999.

-- We're normal and everyone else is skewed.

-- The regression line looks better than the unemployment line.

-- No one knows what we do so we are always right.

-- Deviation is considered normal..

-- We are right 95% of the time.

-- We are honestly significantly different.

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Three professors (a physicist, a chemist, and a statistician) are called in to see their dean. Just as they arrive the dean is called out of his office, leaving the three professors there. The professors see with alarm that there is a fire in the wastebasket.

The physicist says, "I know what to do! We must cool down the materials until their temperature is lower than the ignition temperature and then the fire will go out."

The chemist says, "No! No! I know what to do! We must cut off the supply of oxygen so that the fire will go out due to lack of one of the reactants."

While the physicist and chemist debate what course to take, they both are alarmed to see the statistician running around the room starting other fires. They both scream, "What are you doing?"

To which the statistician replies, "Trying to get an adequate sample size."

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A statistician's proof that all odd numbers are prime:

3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is experimental error so throw it out, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... the rest follows by induction.

Did you hear about the statistician who took the Dale Carnegie course? He improved his confidence from .95 to .99.

Did you hear about the statistician who was thrown in jail? He now has zero degrees of freedom.

A statistician's definition of a scenic and exotic trip is traveling three standard deviations above the mean in a normal distribution.

Two unbiased estimators were sitting in a bar. The first asked, "So, how do you like married life?" The second replied, "It's pretty good if you don't mind giving up that one degree of freedom!"

What is a triple-blinded, completely randomized case-control clinical drug trial?

One in which the patients do not know which drug treatment they are receiving, the nurses do not know which drug treatment they are administering, and the physicians conducting the study do not know

what they are doing!

Web browser show-down

Web browsers... everybody has them, usually several. Some people have preferences, others just use what came on their computer. Just thought I'd throw out my thoughts, likes, and dislikes for each... in order of preference:

1. Google Chrome (10.0.648.205): there are a few reasons that I prefer this browser... First, it syncs bookmarks between computers. Since I run Windows sometimes on my MacBook, this is incredibly helpful for keeping my bookmarks in sync between OS X and WinXP. Secondly, and brilliantly, it runs each tab that you open as a separate process on your computer. That is to say, if a web page freezes while loading in one tab, you can keep using all your other tabs and windows without a hiccup. And thirdly, the in-line extensions for checking Gmail, Google Voice, etc. are very handy. I know Firefox has a lot of add-ons too but Chrome's way of doing it is better in my mind. The one thing that I don't really like in Chrome is the bookmark manager. Of course, I have yet to see a better bookmark manager than...

2. Apple Safari (5.0.4): the stock browser that comes on every Mac. Also offered for most versions of Windows. Tends to work a bit better on my computer for video streaming (especially using Microsoft Silverlight), and as I said the bookmark management is terrific. The interface is very discreet and feels like it gets out of the way, but the options for customization (especially through visual appearance) are very lacking almost non-existent. RAM usage is basically a toss-up between Safari and Chrome... add bookmark sync and I'd probably go back to Safari.

3. Mozilla Firefox (4.0): as far as I know this is the #1 open-source browser around, and it shows... the amount of customization that it offers is tremendous. The available themes let you make it look like you want it to, and it's pretty snappy with the new 4.0 release... until you run out of RAM. At least for my computer, this is the Achilles' Heel of Firefox... compared to Safari and Chrome it's a memory hog. Bookmark management is pretty similar to Chrome (but without sync), and video performance isn't up to par either.

4. Opera: I've barely used Opera... the concept of downloading an image instead of a web page is pretty cool. Pretty fast performance both in OS X and on my iPod Touch... for some reason it felt a bit gimmicky though. Blame my lack of experience with it if you want :)

5. Internet Explorer Exploder (version number doesn't matter): runs slow, bookmark management is bad, plus if you're using anything before version 8 security is awful from what I've heard. If it was the only browser around it wouldn't be bad, but against Chrome with bookmark sync, Safari with its great interface, and Firefox with endless customization it doesn't stand much of a chance.

Apologies to Dan Goslen for making another list of 5... oh well. Have a great Easter weekend everybody!

A post about nothing

I know that I have been absent from this blog quite a bit this semester. This is not due to lack of material to write about (I've still got plenty of thoughts bouncing around in my head), nor is it due to lack of time to write it (I'm not in engineering, remember? :P ). It's just that a lot of what I've been thinking about recently isn't really blog-able material... I've had some ideas (and some given to me) for various post themes but either a) couldn't figure out how to write on these ideas or b) felt that the posts ended up too accusatory/critical of others, which is definitely not what I want to be doing here. How to change this situation and come up with good material I'm not exactly sure... might have to switch to stuff like ranting about all the stupid drivers around campus. But that's being critical of others. But on the other hand they deserve it...

Until next time, I leave you with a picture that Jeff Basey put up on Facebook:

What's the point?

What's the point of social media? To show off how awesome you are? Or to actually connect with people? I feel like it's tended towards the former, even when it's got so much potential for the latter. It's getting old. How ironic that in our search to impress others we don't actually build real friendships...

And speaking of irony... I'm putting this up on social networking sites (Twitter & Facebook). Not quite sure how I feel about that... :P

Also, I know there's a new Passion CD coming out in a few weeks, but Passion: Awakening from last year is also phenomenal. Check it out!