curlcntr

github, youtube posts, for my hobby have small visibility. Doesn't matter. I enjoy the project for fun of creating and building.

Open source hybrid piano. Been a very part-time hobby for several years.

I put this on the back of my phone after completing my PhD.

"in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few" - Shunryu Suzuki

Great quotes!

I had an EE graduate degree (systems, dsp, control...) and returned to school for a physical chemistry graduate degree. Initially was nervous about my first QM class but as Hamming noted so much of the math is similar.

And something else for any future intelligent species:

Today, fossils are dug up and flown around the world to museums etc. We publish but if that storage doesn't last or is undecipherable, future civilizations might have an interesting adventure trying to reconstruct the world of 100's of millions of years before our time.

I wonder if there has been any consideration of this or attempts at placing long-lived simple markings to guide?

Its interesting to see the influence of Debussy through time. For example the wonderful work of Bill Evans.

This might be a stupid question, but, airplanes are computerized, can they be programmed such-that they simply won't fly into buildings, cities, restricted airspace, etc..

My team at work. We are racing to an important deadline. Everyone is working well together. Its just fun.

And given the possibility some interviewers experiencing their own imposter syndrome, around being qualified to assess qualifications, perhaps that could explain some of the questions too.

"naming is the origin of all particular things" - Tao Te Ching.

That quote, first page, stopped me in my tracks for a long time. I often recall it when I'm tempted by the naming (categorization, abstracting, ...) of some X imagining I understand more about it than I actually do. Similar to as you note, I think.

Yeah, my first exited to $0 as well.

With you there. My '68 Camaro, small-block, and requisite Muncie 4-speed. Can't imagine it any other way.

Yeah, back then we would spend massive amount of time hanging around with friends, with few distractions. Cruising was popular, confined to one block, and lots of people, because if you strayed from those physical locations, there was little way to reconnect with the group.

I don't know how it is today.

I wonder if mid-30's could be a point of going either direction?

At 34 I discovered a career passion around serving others, whereas previously the orientation was mostly toward myself.

Nothing changed in my daily work, just a perspective.

"There is a duality between zero and infinity, expressed in the elementary identity 1/0 = ∞ . If one side of the duality does not occur in nature, also the other side ought not to."

It wasn't clear to me that the second sentence was sufficiently proved. At first glance it seems reasonable, but the authors went a bit too fast past that claim for me.

My company has a tuition assistance program that allowed me to complete an MS and PhD, while working full-time. Took 10 years. Loved it!

And, it wasn't just the money that helped, it was also that they supported continuing education.

I enjoy combining piano and computer programming and have so many musical composition and animation ideas but they are all fragments of completion. For the past year I've been trying to finish some and put on youtube but would enjoy doing more. Then I might actually improve too!

By chance I just put one up this morning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXECreEgcmU

I learned to program on my own then studied EE and hard sciences in school. Figured I already knew everything about programming. Hubris of my youth. I'd have taken more CS courses in college.

I worked as an engineer at a startup early in my career (looong time ago). Company went under, stock => $0.

However, I am extremely grateful for that time. It taught me a wide range of non-technical skills that have proved invaluable throughout my career.

Most of those non-technical skills revolved around leadership opportunities, being given huge responsibilities vs. my skill/age (and having to figure it all out on my own), and getting to participate in many aspects of the business.

It ingrained in me ownership; and I've never been able to shake bringing that startup mentality to everything I do at a larger company.

Just my experience. Much of this perhaps is achievable while at larger companies, depending on the situation.

I have the book the author of that article wrote (The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw). Its an interesting book. Historical perspective on ideas is fascinating.

Mindfulness style meditation without any goals or objectives, no clock or apps. No expectations. Just the beauty of it. For me, that has been most consistent with the nature of the practice itself.

Yes. And,

When I was younger, I would over-train, recover quickly, repeat (I run, weight train, cycle).

Now, I don't heal so fast. Instead, I try to maximize my strength and fitness while simultaneously minimizing injuries.

At this age, I look at it as a fun constrained optimization problem. So, the added intellectual challenge, required to be physically active while aging, I quite enjoy.

Best wishes to heal soon and be back on the board!

I saw this quote in Nature last year [1]

"Viruses outnumber prokaryotes by ten to one and are said to kill half of the world's bacteria every two days"

Maybe these two are locked in some sort of existential battle for Earth while everything else is a side show?

[1] H. Ledford, "Five big mysteries about CRISPR’s origins", Nature, 12 January 2017. Volume 541 Number 7637

There was an article a few years back in Chemical & Engineering News (C&E News) about food chemistry and how much time and energy, engineering and planning is put into every aspect of processed foods - flavor, texture, dynamics, consistency, etc, etc. Makes sense, from a business perspective. The science of how to design food that makes my brain really really want it. Meanwhile, back to my broccoli.

Yes, Wagner was a big influence on Debussy (covered well in "Afternoon of a Faun" by Snyder). Some say was an obsession. For example, to find what to do after Tristan. Prelude.

Debussy wrote in 1910 - I am neither revolutionizing nor demolishing anything. I am quietly forging my own way ahead without any trace of propaganda for my ideas - as is proper for a revolutionary. I am no longer an adversary of Wagner. Wagner is a genius but geniuses can make mistakes. Wagner pronounced himself in favor of the laws of harmony. I am for freedom. But freedom must essentially be free".

I play a lot of Debussy. His art is wonderful.

Note that March 25 will be 100 years since he died.

There was an interesting article in Science last month about looking at pollinators holistically - butterflies, flies, 20K species of bees, even some vertebrates - and contrasting to focus on one or a few of bee species.

Unfortunately the online link needs login http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6374/392

Taking this another level, and, where I thought the article was originally going, there is an internal dialog going on even with external silence. An aspect of vipassana meditation (and probably others) is when that internal noise silences.

There's an analogy here for software and engineering too. Getting to root cause and finding solid solutions - takes curiosity, energy... and time.

Cool!

Nearly all my comments so far are about books but Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics provided a turning point in my understanding of E&M.... and took over a year (of pain) to get through.

On the other end of the 'spectrum', Griffiths Intro to Electrodynamics is extremely readable and just as good.

Hope so. Met and chatted with Al Worden while on a NASA tour a few years back. Really cool experience. (although was Apollo 15 command module pilot so went to the moon, didn't walk on it).