On approximations

Approximations are cool. Really. I'm gaining a whole new appreciation for them this semester. For one thing, I'm in my first ever 'engineering' class, and really, all of engineering is based on approximating. Approximate a woodpecker as a mass spring system (no, seriously, see this link. In particular, check out the diagram on page 5). Approximate a spring as linear. Approximate, approximate, approximate.
Or take my theoretical mechanics class. We find crazy systems of differential equations and then approximate to solve them. Or solve them numerically, which involves approximating every step of the way (no pun intended).
Anyhow, the reason I was inspired to post after all this time was a combination of two quotes. The first:
"How fast is this rocket going? Just a general guess."
"Erm ... very fast."
"No, I want one sig. fig., not zero!"

And the second:
"It turns out 4 is a really lousy approximation for pi"

I will admit to being the speaker for the second quote. I was trying to create a wire binding for a small handmade book, and needed this coiled wire to be a circle with a given radius. Not being one for measuring sticks, I needed to figure out how long I needed to coil the wire before tying off. Since I wanted a circle of at least that given radius, I figured I'd round pi up a bit, but ... well, as the quote says, 4 is a pretty lousy approximation for pi.

Ah, the adventures of life.

:-)

Fun things

I know I haven't posted in a while; I apologize.
I just wanted to share a couple of fun things going on right now.
First off, for the first time, I have unicycled wearing a skirt (and shorts underneath, but that's not the point!). The scariest thing is the dismount, because if my skirt catches on the seat, it sends either me or the unicycle into the ground.
Second, experimental archaeology is a legitimate field. Enough said.

Successful use of the Meta key

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I'm an emacs person. Well, I finally found how to use something other than the escape key as emacs' Meta key. The Meta key is another command key, like Command on the Mac keyboard or Control on Macs or PCs. On Windows machines, the Alt key is automatically used as the Meta key, but for some reason, the Alt/Option key on the Mac isn't set to Meta in emacs. It's bothered me for about as long as I've had my computer. However, today I finally figured out how to fix it! It has to do with not emacs but Terminal, the command-line interface in Mac OS-X.
In Terminal, go to Terminal > Preferences > Settings > Keyboard and check the 'Use Option as Meta key' checkbox.
Hooray!

Thanks to this website for describing the solution!

Mountain Unicycling!

This is finals week, which means that I have no classes and a lot of take-home exams. I decided yesterday that the best possible place to take an exam was in the mountains. So I packed a couple meals for myself, hopped on my unicycle, and headed north. I was even feeling organized enough to snap a picture of myself:

I'm actually pretty happy with how this shot
turned out.

Three miles later, I hit the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park, which contains a beautiful 5-mile mountain trail. The base of the trail was a little shady, and the temperature hadn't yet risen above 60 (in the middle of December! Seriously, SoCal, I'm disappointed in your inability to stay warm...), so I decided to head upward.
A few notes on mountain unicycling:
1) Mountain trails are steep! It's difficult enough to bike up them - unicycling is downright crazy. But I got great traction, and managed to stay on the unicycle for pretty decent chunks of time. The biggest problem I encountered was free mounting (getting onto the unicycle without a wall) on a steep incline. When I couldn't make it any further, I generally ended up getting off and walking up to the next (relatively) flat spot.
2) If you ever need an ego boost, ride a unicycle on a busy mountain trail. The crazy looks, spontaneous laughs, and complements make all the hard work worthwhile. I even had one group ask if they could take a video of me...
3) Uphill is hard, downhill is terrifying. Once, I almost passed a bicyclist. I was very impressed with myself. Then, we hit a downhill bit. The bicycle has brakes; the only way I can brake is by never going too fast in the first place. I'm pretty sure I went slower downhill than up because of that.

In any case, I had a great time. I was riding uphill, focusing on not falling, and looking for a nice place to stop and study chemistry. I looked up for a moment, and was practically blown off my feet (off my wheel?). The scenery was beautiful!

Mountains all the way!

I also caught a glimpse of Claremont, which was apparently a little foggy that morning:

I found a nice place to sit and study chemistry, then went a little further on and found a place to take my chemistry exam (which I'm not allowed to discuss until 5:00 pm today - I may update this post after that). I read a little, munched on some trail mix, and then tackled the remaining 3.5 miles of the loop. Yes, I could have just turned around and gone 1.5 miles back, but the way I'd come was pretty steep, and I wanted to see the other portion of the trail. It was an amazing ride. I'll certainly be returning to the park later this week or next semester.
In any case, I eventually got back to campus, after a grand total of around 10-11 miles of unicycling. I was checking out my unicycle and brushing off the dust when I spotted a little pebble lodged in the tread of my wheel. I flicked it out, then heard the sound all bicyclists dread: pshhhhhhhhh. I now have a completely flat tire, which is rather sad. I'll have to see if I can find a patch before the end of finals so I can return the unicycle to the club. (Yes, I'm still using a borrowed unicycle. I'm hoping to get one of my own over break - I have my eye on the Nimbus 26" Mountain unicycle, which gets awesome reviews and is actually designed for mountain unicycling.)
Edit (13:00 Dec. 12): Thanks to the Pitzer College Green Bike Program, the unicycle has a patch and is rolling as usual again! Hooray!
Further edit (11:45 Dec. 13): False alarm! It appears I have another hole in my tire, as my wheel is completely flat again this morning. Unfortunate.
Further further edit (19:30 Dec. 13): Hooray! I paid another visit to Green Bikes this afternoon, where I found a nice little thorn on the inside of the tire tread. I've removed that, patched the tire again, and tightened all of the loose bolts on the seat. I'm glad to be returning the unicycle in better condition than I found it.

On a somewhat related note, I found an awesome blog by a mountain unicyclist: Unplanned Dismount. The author has a great sense of humor, and it sounds like he does a lot of the same kind of riding I'd like to be able to do someday. He also gives a lot of reasonable-sounding tips, though I can't try them out at the moment thanks to my little experience with a thorny pebble. 

There will be blood

And here I thought I had bad circulation when I had all my blood in my system...
I donated blood today, a pint, which ends up being around 10% of the blood in my veins. It wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be. It's also nice to know that my blood, literally a part of me, might have some role in saving someone else's life. Oh, and the coupon to Coldstone certainly doesn't hurt. I'm sure I can find someone else who wants it.

I'm not allowed to do 'strenuous exercise' for the next (*checks watch*) 17 hours and 50 minutes. That meant that at today's Ultimate practice, I found myself in the role of filmmaker. It's funny how an hour and a half of watching Ultimate through a camera made me so much better at commentating. I still occasionally forget to pan with the play or some such rookie mistake, but I think I'm getting better.
Also, it's pretty darn cold for Southern California. It'll be just above freezing overnight. Standing around filming, in the cold, with rather substantially less blood than usual, when I have bad circulation even with all of my blood, is just a recipe for Frosty Freshman. It was a relief to eventually head to a team dinner in the pleasantly warm dining hall.
All in all, though, it was a rewarding experience, and I suspect I'll be donating again in the future.

Umm...Prolog?

Prolog is a really neat concept. The idea is that in a program, you give the computer facts and tell it how to recognize a solution, and then the computer finds all possible solutions. Great. I'm in the process of debugging a predicate (kind of like a function) right now, and I accidentally stumbled upon this:

Easter egg! It's like in Python: when you type 'import antigravity,' it opens up your default web browser to this page.
I love programmers' sense of humor.
Anyhow, back to debugging!

Edit: It seems that this is what happens whenever you ask the Prolog command line the value of a variable. Variables start off as unbound (nothing), so they had to come up with some kind of error message, and decided on a creative one.

An adventure!

At Mudd, I live only a few miles from the base of the nearest mountain. It turns out that it's really a 2.8-mile straight shot down a single road - even I couldn't possibly get lost on the way. Anyway, last night, I decided that today would be the perfect day to go check it out. I packed myself a breakfast, set out gobs of layers against the (gasp) forty degree weather in the mornings, and got up early to head out. Even the threat of light drizzles throughout the morning wasn't enough to dissuade me. Unfortunately, I don't have the endurance (or the time) at the moment to run a solid six miles in a single go, but that just made it the perfect unicycle outing.
It was glorious. The rain (mostly) held off, with just a few light showers here and there along the way. It was an amazing feeling to watch the mountains, a constant backdrop around here, slowly getting closer over the course of a half-hour ride. The sidewalks were pretty awesome, too. It's like they were designed for fledgeling unicyclists to practice on!
I would totally post a picture of the curvy paths here, if I hadn't just somehow lost all the ones I took between the memory card from my camera and my pictures folder. I suppose I'll have to get a picture next time!
I reached the trailhead for a 5-mile loop, which looks like an awesome trip. It was pretty busy today, probably because it's a weekend, but I might be able to pay it a longer visit in relative isolation during the week (now that it's the second half-semester, I only have one class on both Tuesdays and Thursdays). I look forward to exploring it more!

Spoiled

Ah, I love Southern California. It's early November, and I can still viably wear shorts and a t-shirt outside, as long as I'm relatively active. Even so, the practically freezing fifty degrees this morning had me wearing a sweatshirt, jacket, and gloves. I shudder to think what I will be like when I go home.
Both the open and women's team here have started cranking up their practices. I now attend practice on six days of the week, plus a scrimmage on Saturdays, and sprint practice on Sundays. I love it, but I'm starting to question the viability of a solid 14 hours of Ultimate per week, plus around four hours of other relatively strenuous exercise (running/sprints) and probably 2-3 of moderate exercise (walking, unicycling, biking). Time is starting to become a major factor.
Ah, well. I'm sure I'll figure something out.
Enjoy the extra hour of sleep tonight!

Back to a training wheel

Hooray! I have a training wheel again! The parents of a friend of my mom's happen to live nearby, and managed to find a pretty nice and inexpensive bike. I am now capable of going at speeds over 10 miles per hour and exerting minimal effort on downhills!
Here it is (with a really lousy background):

Ah, the wheels...
They decided that the bike was pretty nice and rather appealing to thieves, so they sprayed some nice pink stripes on the wheels to deter would-be bike snatchers. Here's a closer-up shot:

I'm not sure if you can see this from the picture, but written in the stripes is P-H-Y-S-I-C-S. A neat little touch, I suppose.

Unicycling!

I started unicycling around a month and a half ago. I have a lot to say about it, so I may end up breaking this into multiple posts, but I have to start somewhere, right?

Part 1: Why I started
I've halfheartedly wanted to learn for a while. My Oma gave me a unicycle for my birthday years ago, but I never quite got the hang of it. Okay, fine, I never even got close to getting the hang of it. Harvey Mudd has a unicycling club, though, and I was free for a couple hours during their first meeting, so I thought I'd go check it out. It's a quintessential Mudd thing, really.
Other awesome reasons to learn, now that I know how:
1) Making fun of bicyclists for having too many wheels.
2) Making fun of bicyclists for not yet having lost their training wheel.
3) Flailing your arms like an idiot while balancing on one wheel is fun!
4) Unicyclists tend to be well-balanced people. (facepalm)
5) Getting funny looks from regular people when riding to buy groceries etc.
6) Instant identification as a Mudder anywhere in Claremont