If you’re stumped for Christmas and need a gift idea- why not send an Amazon Gift Card? They arrive immediately (so technically, you could wait until Christmas day even… you slacker you…) If you purchase via the link below I get a small affiliate referral to help support this blog (at no cost to you).
Here’s wishing you all a Very Merry Christmas!
It appears that the latest version of the Apple iPhone and iPod software (2.2) breaks the current release of Fring. Currently Fring users who have updated are finding they can no longer connect to the Fring servers. I’ve been wondering for quite some time if Apple doesn’t syphon all IP traffic through a central hub, then off to the internet, but it’s just my own head. The reason being that Apple could control malicious software if they controlled the iPhone and iPods in this manner.
In anycase, Fring on the iPod and iPhone currently is inoperable. I wish the dev team luck in finding a solution. I even ordered a mic for the iPod in order to use Skype and/or Gizmo (currently only 1 VOIP server can be used at a time) with my iPod. So, it appears I have to either deprecate my phone (may be very difficult to do), or hope that Fring solves this quickly.
Here’s a thread I came across on Fring’s forums describing the issue: iPod Touch and version 2.2 issue.
Update! Fring says they have a fix and it should hit the AppStore soon! Excellent. (See Above Thread on the Fring forums.)
Very sad news. Howard Knoebel passed away at the age of 85 in Neoga, IL, Nov. 19th. Here’s a picture of Howard I snagged from his website. I hope to have a bit more about him in a future post. In particular some of the fantastic science he accomplished.
One hilarious anecdote is that Howard actually calculated whether or not it is worth your while to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. His calculations show it is not. He basically calculated how much you would make an hour if at every step of the way there was a penny to pick up. 
It turns out you won’t make minimum wage by doing so. Hence, it does not pay to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. Howard was a bit of a rascal Scientist, I think that’s not too bad a name for his ever present creation and discovery. He always had his hands in something. We were all sure that his tractor with various add-ons would flip over on top of him one day. He also had a hatred towards wood peckers.
You’ll be sorely missed, Howard. I regret not being more in touch than we were. 73 DE N9RZC!
ps- Howard’s website can be found here (for while it is still up): Howard’s RR1 Site
The more I hear Benjamin Zander (Wikipedia) speak, the more I realize how he can lead a group of people to make beautiful music (Boston Philharmonic). To start your Monday off right, I strongly suggest you watch this lecture of Zander’s at Pop Tech this year.
If you’ve ever played an instrument before, you definitely need to watch this video. We get to see Zander teach a young Cellist how to play a piece by Bach, and at the same time learn why the Abundance Mentality is critical to our own playing (work). He explains mostly by showing in this talk: you’ll notice his own abundance of joy come out throughout his discussion, and in his responses to the difficulty of helping this clearly gifted student get more out of his playing.
Can’t forget the hat-tip to Tango at DesignVerb (a great blog!)
For more of Zander’s discussion on Classical Music with heart, see his TED talk given in February of this year.
I may be doing a few posts here and there about a few applications for the iPod touch. But, I want to add information that will make these posts helpful, so expect each one to have a few examples, if possible. In the least, I hope to describe at least 1 missing feature you might find important.
First, Apple for some reason did not include the ability to search LDAP servers into the iPod / iPhone Mail application. A horrible omission for someone who’s used to having To: field searches available at his fingertips. So, what to do? Well, you could use an online search (if your organization has one) via the web, or you could look for an application. I looked for an application. I found: LDAPeople by Neoos Software. 
To read about how to setup LDAPeople for the UIUC Campus, and more about it’s interface etc., click “more”…
Read More
Boston rocked: I’m writing this on a new iPod Touch! Filmetrics was running a drawing for those who brought samples to test! Big thankyou’s go out to Filmetrics and AVS. I will write more about the conference in a series of posts coming soon. I’m hoping everyone had a great week while I was gone.
The society formerly known as the American Vacuum Society (AVS) is holding their international conference in Boston, MA next week! And I’ll be there! [Exciting!] If you are going to be there, drop me a line on the blog and we can snag a coffee or beer together.
The programs and cards sent out may have a familiar image!
My AFM image of the CuInSe2 Bicrystals I grow in our lab won second place in the Art-Zone competition last year! It was great fun! [Thanks goes to AVS for being a fantastic organization!]
Wish me luck with my talk!!
A series of MATLAB functions will follow. Some of these “.m” files call each other, so ensure you have all of them before you start.
The purpose of this file is to load in all the .x00 files in a directory of Omega-Omega-2-Theta slices for reciprocal space mapping of a sample. Please note that as of this writing, the data has not yet been converted to Q-space.
The first function loads data into your workspace for a directory of .x00 files that have a common base filename. The user needs to supply the first index number and last index number for loading the files. The program then attempts to load “filenameIndex.x00″ in a linear fashion for all .x00 files of that filename indexed in the cd’d directory. [Change directory to the working directory needed before starting this function.]
There will be a number of posts following this one that will attempt to recreate reciprocal space mapping in MATLAB. The functions that will be posted in the coming days read in .x00 files from the Philips XPert XRD system and try to recreate the slices of Omega Omega-2Theta scans produced for reciprocal space mapping.
Currently I haven’t changed the data into Q-space, so they will be reported in Omega -v- Omega2Theta space.
An example call to the function is:
DisplayQSpace1('',9,184);
Example output of the function(s):
One thing I find extremely helpful in my research, is the ability to download citations for articles my co-workers send. I like to import them into BibDesk and auto-file the journal articles by first-author. Unfortunately, not everyone has Bibtex export abilities. This isn’t too bad, as BibDesk imports most major citation files. One thing that I do abhorr, is when a major company decides not to offer a citation download option! Science Direct is the fellow who gets my wrath this evening. It’s so bad I’ve been looking for other companies who keep track of journals that have downloads for the ones that Science Direct publishes!
I wonder if you pay their absurd journal prices, if you get citation downloads…
For more on Absurd Journal pricing, see: Knuth and “Trapped…”
I'm a graduate student (PhD Candidate) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I've studied and researched in two fields of Materials Science and Engineering (Polymers and Semiconductors). My interests are as diverse as my musical tastes and I usually have my hand in some crazy project during my free time.
I'm available for consulting and have access to a world-renown materials research user-facility supported by the D.O.E. If you would like to know more, please contact me.