It is sweltering hot, and thunderstorms almost daily. Yesterday the windows were actually rattling when the lightning occured and whirls formed above the street drains due to the heavy downpour (the water in the parking lot was well above my ankles!).

From this article on LiveScience, I don’t live at a thunderstorm hot spot at all, but anyway. The article also has some great links, check out the lightning images!

In honor of the 4th of July, here are 4 fun science links:

4th of July Science Projects is a list of 10 great ideas for homemade patriotic science fun! I especially like the dark Snakes recipe because it’s so much fun to light them and watch them squirm and wiggle!

Steve Spangler recently published an experiment on how to make Colored Smoke Rings in honor of Independence Day. So cool!

You can make Exploding Bubbles when you check out this NPR special. Theodore Gray explains how to mix hydrogen, oxygen, and soapy water to make really neat explosions. He’s also the author of the book Mad Science, which I’m adding to my wish list; it’s all things that go bang!

For some reason when I think of cool things related to the 4th of July, the second thing that comes to my mind after fireworks, of course(!), is a potato gun. If you’ve never used one, you’ve got to try it! SpudTech is a website where you can purchase potato guns, but it is always way cooler to build your own.

I am interested in popular science books as a genre and spotted a book called The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science in my local bookshop.  The book is by Natalie Angier who is an experienced science writer, having been the senior science writer for Time magazine.

Firstly the bad bits:- The book is riddled with American cultural references that, for readers from the UK or any other country, could become slightly irritating.  There are also many puns or plays on words that are, at times, clever but other times appear a little desperate.  It is as if the author feels that we need a smile on our faces to deal with challenging concepts.  Perhaps she is right! Read the rest of this entry »

A brilliant tip on how to mash up CiteULike and BibDesk (two of my favorite tools). It helps that my article-search workflow is identical to the author’s. If you browse and post to CiteULike, this is a great way to bring those articles into BibDesk.

Academic Productivity » CiteULike + BibDesk: Sync your references and live smarter

This is the kind of thing I should use Twitter for, but I’m just too verbose. For the few onlookers interested in an update on the life of Matthew, though, here it is.

1. I’m interning at MUSC, doing medical physics theory research on dosimetry. Really, it’s just me dissecting some software from a Brazilian research lab and processing numbers, but it makes me feel like I’m at least doing something productive.
2. I’m working at Masters Studios over the summer as well. I actually kinda ran the studio this past week because Master Phil was out. Next week I’m back to just one or two evening classes to teach a week. Over and over I’ve volunteered to redo the crappy website for them, and I keep hearing for the past one or two years that someone’s been working on it already. I think at this point the site would already have to be re-updated to keep up with the times.
3. I got out of Fedora stuff for a while as I adjusted to summer, but I’m kinda trying to get back into it. I’m not sure that I want to keep doing all docs stuff, so I’ll pull back on that once I can find someone to hand off the user guide to and then I’ll get into packaging. I’ve been reading up on the packaging guidelines tonight.
4. I’d like to reconnect with some friends over the summer. There are a few people I’ve been independently talking to about getting together, so hopefully that’ll all fall into place. I was going to do something with Araba too, but I have a feeling she’s already gone back to Cambridge without saying bye… (*frown*)
5. I’ve been blogging more frequently!
6. Rob and I are working on Nevhma, a Sugar activity for the XO-1 for the math4 project. It’s a little Tron-like game where you run around a coordinate plane to hit benchmark points.
7. Sherwin and I are still working on our project which has about 6 different names now. He’s actually done way more effective work than me since I started worrying about MUSC stuff, but hopefully I’ll be able to get my part done by the end of the summer and we can release Beta 1.

That’s all I can think of right now.  Hopefully I’ll find another Csifa soon, and take a photo if I can.

Goodnight, Moon.

A book – meant to be read.  Ideas to be imparted.  Blueprints for a different world, proof of another soul.

Justice – I spoke of unverifiable impossibilities, is this not the same thing?  It is difficult to refute those that say: might makes right.  physics theory rules everything around me.

Belief in such ideals is not tangible.  I find no phenomenal support for it – yet follow.  It is as though the mere suggestion of such a noble idea is enough; diffuse scent narrows into a trail.

This feeling – justice - seems to have been carved enigmatically into history as well.

Ecstatic crescendo flowing from a morose passage.  A fragile primal Dionysian undressing.  Revolutionary evolution.

Empathy and intuition reveal the path.  I lapse into the subconscious, and my conscious becomes the dream world – it can only enter in thin limpid rays.

I find that the subconscious mind is not terrifying, or lustful, or disempowering, but the opposite.  When I can recognize these fears I swat them aside like gnats.  Living in the “present“.

Logic yields, and the waters of perception and empathy flow forth, guiding morality.

We are ever grateful for this delicate vessel, granting passage through this limitless world.  Body temple.

The new pursuit is to avoid thinking overly at all.  We ought not DOUBT that we can effect the appearances.

Occam’s maxim applies here.

The peaceful enlightened blossoming of humanity at times seems forced, absurd, abstract.

But it emerges from the necessary framework of language.

If we were not convinced that others are as we are, we would not write.  We would stand mute.

Is logic truly an attempt to shape a reality that cannot be grasped?

Are books misleading?

Can we trust any facts?

Or merely through limited interwoven application?

It seems that the things we believe indeed become the world.

In this way, an active approach yields results.

Secret Science Anti Gravity Revealed Homemade – The best home videos are here

Check out this ”levitating” phenomena revealing an interesting way to “travel”?

Just a short post here to keep up momentum while I work on some longer pieces. This is a short peek at my ongoing work with 2D physics theory using XNA.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a list (to be updated whenever I remember to do so) of math and physics theory texts I’ve found online. I haven’t read all of them yet; the ones that I have finished wll be marked with a **, and the ones that I have begun (and have found useful) will be marked with a *. If after reading something that I’ve posted, I find that it isn’t that great, I’ll remove it.

Math

• *First-Order Equations: Method of Characteristics (pdf)

physics theory