Pedantic ?

yup, I'm still writing, rewriting, thinking and re-thinking. I hate this stage of work; you realize that you're wasting time being critical of yourself but you still can't be satisfied with what little has (or how much has not) apparently been accomplished. Anyway, I'm just going back through my introduction (again) and seeing some interesting things. Like the fact that when I sum up what it is I study, the following chain of uber-dry terms appears: "...spatial and temporal scales of steady-state critical-taper orogenic evolution". My undergraduates would experience the instantaneous onset of unconsciousness if I ever said that phrase to them (either by fear or boredom, I'm not sure which). But yeah, I guess, that's more or less what I study in a nutshell.

~t

pictures and words

this post is going to be mostly pictures, I think, but first some words. I've been holed-up in my house for the last couple of days, not really venturing out for reasons other than getting food or getting something from my office. I'm in the throes of writing my comprehensive exam research proposal, which means I'm being forced to look back at what I've done over the last two and a half years, and make some kind of statement about what I plan to do for the next two and a half. I suppose maybe I've done a fair amount, but it doesn't feel like it. Anyway, I recently developed a few roles of film that had been sitting around my house for a while, here are a few results. one is from a day of climbing last summer, where I was apparently unaware of the f-stop setting on the camera, so only a very shallow focal length appears clearly defined but I still like the pic. The others are from the last winter, after an evening of powdery snowfall. The tree also shows a ghost of the film border in the sky... apparently a reflection from inside the housing of my pentax.. I kept it in though, rather than remove it with photoshop. I think this is all on Fuji Reala 100 stock...





~t

a pic of sunset in death valley, CA... taken about a year ago.

~t

up and coming

Hey all,

The last several months have seen me turning away from blogs and more towards the things on my desk. Work, teaching and preparing for candidacy have more or less ruled my life recently, with the occasional escape for an hour or two to ride my bike. It seems like the semester is winding down, which of course means that everything is actually winding up, towards a culmination of a couple major events, namely my comps exam and a presentation at AGU on my recent(-ish) findings in Taiwan. As always during November, I've been feeling my internal stress-meter climbing steadily for the last couple of weeks... but I seem to have temporarily plateaued for the last couple of days. I've been thinking less and doing more, and trying to come to some quieting realization that even though I'll be busting ass for about the next month straight I'll come out the other end just fine and ready for a break.

~t

mathematicians

they might as well be called mathemagicians. I spent my morning rolling my eyes at the lecturer (a well known, highly respected professor and researcher) this morning, as he recited (practically verbatum) the same lecture he gives in another class (which I've already taken, and also struggled with). ...which is all fine and good, except for the fact that he spent a large amount of time making mistakes, stalling the class and generally confusing everyone who hadn't already mastered fluid dynamics (grad students were correcting him throughout). I never should have taken this class.

~T

backup

jeez...

Between my roommate's computer dying this week and the structure lab computer data drive eating it this afternoon, I'm backing up my entire hard-drive to my extra external drive right now. the gremlins are running wild here...

then again... both of the computers in question are PC's running Windows XP... thank god I use a Mac.

~t