~t

Crested Butte

home safe and sound after a weekend of riding...
~t

Clouds

clouds during sunset Tuesday.

~t

HAHAHA

I hadn't seen this one yet... awesome!



~t

Color Tests

I tried to do an anaglyph using a color base... it works, but it's still a little hard to look at. The image itself (the overlain satellite image) is very low-res, things would probably look a lot better if I used a higher-quality image.



~t

Anaglyphs are awesome...

Today I was supposed to go into work and magically turn about 10 pages of notes (already typed) into about 5 pages of carefully sculpted prose with a scientific twist. That somehow failed to happen (again) so instead I learned how to generate 3D anaglyph images using expensive software (a commercial single-user node-locked Mac OS-X license for ENVI+IDL = $7000).

Yeah... that's SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS... seriously. I should note that since this software was developed by faculty in my department, I get that same license for twenty-five bucks.

Anyway, I finally figured out how to make totally-sweet 3D anaglyphs from my also-totally-sweet high resolution digital elevation model data of taiwan... essentially I hope to be including images like this in posters so that I can give a poster presentation in one of those crowded AGU aisles with a bunch of people standing around, all wearing goofy red-and-blue glasses. The image below is a south-looking view across high terraces in Puli. You will need a standard pair of 3D glasses to see this, or just something red and something cyan to look through. Red goes over your left eye.



~t

return of the kiddies

It's beginning. clueless adults with dazed-and-confused looks on their faces, children throwing tantrums and wishing their parents would just leave already... I speak of course, about the beginning of the fall semester. Along with the influx of something like twenty-thousand kids (I can say that, because many of them are ten years younger than I am) comes the heightened risks of commuting through town. Boulder, compared to a place like Manhattan, is bike-commuter heaven; many wide concrete paths wind through and around the perimeter of town, have painted lane markers and pass either under or over major roads. Bicycle-car interactions are minimized, but just as dangerous are the behaviours of uninitiated riders on the bike-paths. I have several friends who have suffered injury (broken collarbones, torn ankle ligaments, concussions) because of kids not knowing the rules of the paths, or just lacking common sense. I myself have found that some kids just home in on you like heat-seeking missiles; swerving directly into your lane, slamming on brakes in front of you, ultimately just doing everything in their power to bring about a head-on collision. That is why, this year, I feel very comfortable riding my 35 pound free-ride/downhill bike around town; it's a version of the compact-car/SUV crash model - The bigger vehicle wins. As the actual new-student arrival date approaches, I may start wearing my full-face helmet and body armor too... that way when some unwitting, unaware, foolish child swerves into my lane of the path I can offer a verbal warning but I am no longer going to swerve off the path, or risk my own injury to save them from the embarrassment of learning a lesson the hard way.

I regularly offer friendly advice to drivers in town... like when they pull in front of me across a bike-path I may whistle sharply and say, "hey, watch out for the bike path" or "please don't block the path". I generally assume that if a driver doesn't have a bike-rack on their car they don't know any better, so there's no need to curse and yell at them... most of the time. There are occasions when I wish I had something like a balloon full of honey or oil that I could lob, but maybe some of these magnets would be better.

It seems like biker/driver tensions are gaining momentum, but personally I just think more people are hearing about it... I have always been yelled at and harassed by drivers, regardless of where I was riding or what I was doing. Check out some good articles on the subject...

From BikesnobNYC, about a cop that should be strapped to a rusty bike-rack naked and flogged with an old inner-tube: NYPD assaults cyclist
...Or this one about the misadventures of commuting in a big city, And finally this from a more reputable source: The NY Times on Moving Targets.

~t

New professional contact

After about three years I've decided to actually put my contact information and some form of a CV up on my department webpage... the content isn't there yet, but the splash page should be. Check it out here first...



~t

spaceships and church...

see: "come on..." and "How stupid do you have to be?" for some background on this....

Reading back through some previous posts, and listening to some interesting talks about creativity in skool and what 'purpose' modern education serves (a valid question) I've come to realize, or perhaps merely posit, that organized religion is one of the last major stumbling blocks that human, global, society faces with respects to making the necessary steps to start exploring beyond our preconceived limits. The stars are one thing... is light-speed an attainable goal? what about superluminal travel (i.e. subspace or wormholes)?? Screw traveling to alpha-centauri... why can't we (humans) develop and disseminate electric cars? solar panels? wind-turbines? tide-turbines? geothermal exchangers? There exists so much calculable clout and solid design behind these ideas, it's literally a wonder these technologies haven't been globally shared and implemented already. ...but perhaps not so much a wonder when considering how much money stands to be made off prospects like drilling oil in Venezuela (which harbors some of the richest and most extensive, as yet untapped, oil reserves on the planet) or Alaska. ...or how much money the "big four" stand to make off their no-bid contracts in Iraq. It's disgusting, really.

I drive a car, whenever I need to transport more than 40 pounds of cargo. My car (a '96 VW golf) gets ~35mpg but I still feel lame driving it when I don't absolutely need to. It's a luxury; one that I feel privileged to have at my disposal, but a luxury none the less. If I had the money (or could cheat my way into it) I would quickly convert my golf, or buy a car like this one.

~t

Prophet, or perve?

"To my understanding the Koran does not place a limit and it is up to what your own power, your own endowment and ability allows," he says. - this from Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, of Nigeria.

This man has married 84 wives, and has sired "at least 170 children"....


WTF!?!!

The other thing that gets me:
"Every mealtime they cook three 12kg bags of rice which all adds up to $915 (£457) every day."

OK... I buy rice by the 12kg bag, and here in Boulder (admittedly one of the more expensive places to live within the united states) I pay a whopping $25 per bag. So, by my back-of-the-envelope calculation, I would pay 75 dollars for three 12kg bags, whereas this man spends almost a thousand??!! ...boy is he getting ripped off (or the BBC reporter for this particular article is WAY off in their reporting. Either way, I'm glad I (most likely) will never sire even a hundred children (actually, I'd hope to keep the total to no more than twice two orders of magnitude less than that!)

[nieerd!;]

~t

today's screen

~t

School-Bus

My body is a little sore. My arms are deeply scratched and my legs bruised. I've been exploring trails out in the Indian Peaks and Roosevelt national forest areas recently, with varying success... some trails are almost impossible to ride and others look more like the world-class singletrack that Colorado is known for. "School-Bus" approaches the latter... it's a medium grade (1000 vertical feet in ~3 miles) singletrack that winds across the sheltered slopes of Tennessee Mountain. The conditions include everything from tight aspen clutches with sandy hardpack to open pine forests with squishy loam and roots under tread. The climb out is not a killer, but definitely a grind; the real payoff is coming back down. The first time I rode it I wanted my full face helmet, the second time I rode it (yesterday) I brought my full-face, and all my body-armor. The descent is basically limited by your skill - or your fear - but the trails really allow for full-out speed, and the only thing you have to do is be prepared to thread a few tight spots. Even wearing full arm and leg guards it's a little sketchy, since nothing will ruin your day faster than clipping a tree with your handlebars at 30mph, pads or no. I came close yesterday, catching a full-grown pine tree with my arm. It didn't knock me over (or even slow me down) but I did get rashed through my arm-guard, a reminder that full armor doesn't make you invincible.

It's worth the risk though; trails like schoolbus demand one's full attention when going all out, and it's one of the few things that can get me to stop thinking about work... the forest blurs and everything in the periphery just disappears; only the twists and squeezes of the path ahead are left.

~t

desktop

I can only work for so many hours in a day before I have to turn to some other task. Geology (and science in general) is so structured... my days are dominated by geometries, kinematics, gravitational anomalies and lithospheric flexural behaviours. Data is analyzed, solutions reached and results presented; it all seems very droll at times, as though a monkey could do this. Creativity comes into it at times, in the sense that it facilitates making connections between data sets and jumping to a conclusion (that I then have to prove)... but it still lacks a certain purity. Putting pen to paper, tools to wood or brush to canvas allows for such honest and unbounded creativity of the sort that scientists rarely get the chance to enjoy. I occasionally have small desktop projects, but recently I've just been making desktop images (for my screen) when I can't focus on science. Yesterday's (yes I was working all day Sunday) is below....



~t

come on....

So, the Soyuz is being replaced and the Russians and Europeans have unveiled their new manned-spacecraft design. It looks like a turd. Now... I know that ballistics dictates that a radially symmetric design is the most stable in flight when things like lift are unnecessary... but come on, even a ballistics expert doesn't have to be blind to aesthetics. For instance: solar panels. I know the attraction to having outboard panels, but they are even more susceptible to damage flopping about like that... why not figure out a coating that would allow the panels to be incorporated into the skin of the vehicle? It would do away with external pieces that jam when folding, and it would look hella-sweet. What I'm really lamenting here is the lack of government interest in building a proper space-cruiser.. If these were cars, the Soyuz would be like the Yugo or maybe a geo-metro, the space-shuttle might be a cadillac sedan, but what I want to see oriting the planet is something like a super-duper lamborghini/hummer with a million little windows and a design that just looks awesome. What will aliens think when they look at us and see how our crude little ships putt around in orbit? we'd be like the dunces of the galaxy, sitting in the corner way out here at the end of an arm with our turd-like ships that can't even get us to the nearest star. lame.

hmmmm...

...this is more like it.

...even this would be better!

~t

Claritin Apollo

Feelin' a bit spacey today.... taking allergy meds and trying to work out what has and what hasn't been said about my research area in the published literature. The picture is just a shot from the Apollo 11 mission, that I played with a little bit during my morning coffee. Sometimes I wish I had my own awesome space-suit and brief-case-air-supply... at least the suit could keep the grass pollen out of my system.



~t

Kalmaegi

Typhoon Kalmaegi washed over central Taiwan this weekend, dumping 900mm (yeah, that's three feet) of rain. 19 people were killed in floods or debris flows, mostly in Nantou county. Luckily for us (in a purely academic way) I installed a couple of automatic cameras in the region this spring... hopefully they captured some images of the rivers' responses to such an input. In the meantime tho, I'll post a couple of pictures from the news in Taiwan... The picture of the guy was taken in Taichung, the major city that sits in the central basin of the island and the picture of the house full of mud is from Yu-chi, a couple kilometers south of Puli. This is why I wear flip-flops and shorts when I'm there... because you really do have to wade through the streets sometimes.




~t

Spare Time

...Maybe someday I'll have enough of it to get into something like Arborsculpture... check it out:

Arborsmith Studios

~t

Good Boy!

On my way by Cafe Sole the other morning... This is actually a somewhat normal sight in Boulder.


~t

beat chef

Hi All,

Friday finds me researching pina colada recipes and trying to come up with a new idea for something to grill for a group of friends... perhaps built around seared Tuna or maybe a variation of my butterflied Vietnamese/jerk chicken. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a recipe (from Beardyman) for a funky break. Just for extra measure, I'm also including another beardyman vid of beatbox looping... no instruments or drum machines are used, just a loop sampler.





~t

foods

The last month has seen me struggle to overcome jet-lag, stare drooling at my computer during work, completely reorganize my house, move one roommate out and find a replacement, and eventually refocus on work to start analyzing some of the myriad data that I was given during my recent-ish trip to Taiwan. Once or twice, I've also managed to do fun things, like cook and ride my bike. I still haven't come up with any good biking photos this year, so I'll share a couple of cooking photos... I did a few seared pork ribs with an off-the-cuff marinade/rub (oil, salt, lime, cilantro, vietnamese hot sauce, chipotle, chile molido, tomatillos). Sliced thin, served with grilled asparagus and roasted tomatillo. I also took some of the roasted tomatillo and made some salsa for bread with a bit of virgin olive oil and some cinnamon basil.





~t

"Chuffed"

A word I don't hear very often, but an interesting one. I was just reminded of it while reading this article from the BBC about a young woman who got stuck in a tree while trying to save a cat stuck in the same tree. I'd say I'm pretty chuffed about the work that I'm getting done finally, and patterns are becoming apparent, I just don't know what they all mean yet.

~t

Beatbox Flute

I have never seen this before, tho apparently it's been on the internets for a while. Check it out:



By the way, both these guys are professional symphony and chamber orchestra musicians, this is a side project for them. Just google Beatbox Flute or Greg Patillo and you'll see some interesting things.

~t

Wireframes

I've been choking on data recently... having problems converting data formats and getting over-focused on minutia related to really minor aspects of my work. Although it hasn't been the best use of my time (yesterday was practically a waste because of file format issues) I still came up with a couple interesting figures. I've been trying to show that a certain suite of terraces are actually and old basin floor deposit, but this image seems to say otherwise. Either that or the mapping is just off a little and the georectification could be changed enough to make an argument for that hypothesis.

Science seems largely subjective some times, which is a little scary. The picture is interesting anyway...



~t

Yanks

With apologies to my southern liberal elite friends, you are not yankees. This was pointed out to me the other day, and of course it's true...

I was hoping to find some interesting terminology applied to those southern liberals who identify with many of the political and moral "standards" thought to represent Yankee ideals, but have not managed to find any such pejoratives. Instead, I've only run across many blog entries about bitter rural Americans and a few mentions of the so-called "upland southerners".

Perhaps the most interesting article I've run across on this search was the following, on the perception of outgroups:

Scientific American article on Harvard Students and Rednecks

~T

blocks

I kind of wish I was playing with Legos today... it's just that kind of day. Instead, I'm drawing block diagrams through an imbricated thrust sheet that displays an incipient duplex which is terminated or stalled by a lateral ramp. yeah. Legos would be way better.... just not as productive. I caught coffee at Cafe Sole this morning.. taking a minute to sit outside and look out at the flatirons there, with the I.M. Pei designed National Center of Atmospheric Research prominently in the foreground of the foothills. Very idyllic, indeed.

Recently I've been more aware of the increasingly popular and derogatorily muttered name that conservative media has given many of the left-leaning members of society:

"Latte-Sipping-Liberals"

That's me! From an old article quoting a conservative interest group's advert during the last rounds of elections: "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs." Hey now... I like lattes (or Breve-Lattes to be exact), I love sushi, practically everyone in my hometown drove a volvo when I was growing up, and I also happen to have pierced ears. Rather than vilify something as tasty and benign as coffee or sushi, these folks should just bring back the term "Yankee", since that's really what they mean. The thing that really gets me about the idea of elitism is that somehow only Liberals can be elite. If (just as an example) a conservative man graduates from both Yale and Harvard, avoids military service, gets a wrap-sheet for substance-abuse related arrests and then becomes president, how on earth is that not the very definition of 'elite' with respect to all the negative connotations bred by the right-wing of this country?! Maybe it's ok to have all those advantages, as long as you're an annoying prick that's dumb as bricks. I personally would be thrilled to have someone who could be called a Liberal Elite as president. Wikipedia has a great article on this, which states, "In Thomas Frank's 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' the idea of a liberal elite is suggested to be similar to the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in the George Orwell book Nineteen-Eighty Four, the fictional hated enemy of the people. Frank argues that anger directed towards this perceived enemy is what keeps the conservative coalition together." ...interesting interpretation.

~t

Ride last night...

went for my first trail ride since getting back into CO... just around Marshall Mesa in south Boulder, but the sunset was perfect. I stopped for a moment to watch deer grazing and red wing blackbirds flitting over the fields, all while the sun was casting rays upward from the few clouds over the Rockies. Unfortunately non of that was captured on my cell-phone camera, so I just took a goofy picture of myself that also didn't show up very well.


~t

Ah, mountains, sun, beers...

Here's a pic for those of you in Taiwan or on the East Coast who might be missing mountains and sitting outside in perfect weather for happy hour... from the rooftop of the Lazy Dog pub in downtown Boulder.

~t

Still catching up...

Hey all,

Still catching up... yesterday saw my afternoon nap turn into a 6 hour dream-filled sleep. I woke up completely disoriented and I couldn't even tell what day it was... anyway, I am starting to feel a little more in tune with normal hours here.

just a quick post, while I'm thinking about it: while I was staying in Taipei, I was generously hosted by Kamil and Micha, two post-docs working with John Suppe at Tai-Da. I must thank them profusely for their accommodations but I also wanted to share a post from their blog... While I was there I was often offered the convenience of a ride to work, albeit on the back of a bike. This is the norm in Taiwan, where one often sees two people riding one bike. Micha's comment about a rare metamorphosis is well taken, I suppose two geologists dressed up in ties riding the same bike really is an uncommon sight!

See "MiKaTaiwan" blog here, and pics of two guys on the same bike...

~t

Finally back

Just an update... I am finally back from the other side of the planet. Yesterday was spent mostly asleep, even when technically conscious. see next post below for what I did on the plane-ride back. Today I am back in the office, sorting through 4 gigs of new data, and trying to get my feet back on the ground.

~t

greenhouse

More for the color than anything, but also for the light. There have always been certain houses I've lived in that stuck in my mind... and the single unifying aspect of all these memories is light. The lines, the angles... how it hit my face in morning or crossed the floor in afternoon. My house will have light... bright light that wakes me at sunrise and easy light in the evening. Artificial light is always important, and so much can be achieved with it, but there is nothing like the sun. Two houses I've lived in so far have had dedicated "sun-rooms", overflowing with plants and framed by large windows on at least two whole sides. My mothers was open and clean, with hand woven hammocks hung across the corners offering spots to swing in the afternoon with a breeze from the windows and the sweet smell of the hand-spun fibers filling my nose. My fathers was small and cloistered, but jam packed with books and every issue of national geographic since the forties. A rocking chair in the corner was where I sat, or on the small single bed that made this a guest room.

I could have been an architect... I thought about it seriously for a time, but chose to pursue my love of mountains and rivers instead. That particular choice is the reason I am writing this in the SFO airport, after a 12 hour flight from Taipei. I suppose I could travel as an architect too, but I have the feeling that no matter what I do, I will always lust for more.

Houses in memory... brasil, bali, taiwan, all tropical. Factories, industrial plants, museums, research institutes. airports even. The idea for the green-house is minimalist... open studio-style rooms with kitchen/living downstairs, large sliding glass panes frame the back of the house which would look onto a small yard. This is designed for a city lot, neighbors on both sides, the large completely translucent, fogged acrylic pane covering the utility/closets/bathrooms on the front of the house (with perhaps additional opaque white acrylic panels on the upstairs shower). The roof serves as a sun deck with a full length planter built into the walls for herbs and flowers, maybe some strawberries and cherry tomatoes too. Stairs aren't shown here, but I'd like to put them somewhere out of the way, but central to the house, maybe by increasing the space between the front addition and the main-house enough to put them in between, accessing all the three floors of the main and two of the front. obviously still a design in progress, but for a time-waster to tide me over on a long flight I think it's a decent first cut. Back to work though...



-drawn with google sketch-up

~t

Humidittee

from "I can has cheezburger?", a random website of funny cat pictures; also a bit of a response to a big country hair statement by blogger JustsomeGirl...


yes, there is a cat in there somewhere. back to all lowercase at the moment, no other reason than i am feeling very tired and kinda lazy. it's humid and warm here, but since the sun is down and moon is up (somewhere behind all the haze) the result is just a clammy feeling that permeates my very being. like standing next to ocean spray from waves in cool fog mixed with sweat. the breeze tonight merely acts stir the air, since it is already at saturation with water vapor. no chance to dry out... even MY hair is acting weird. thankfully not as bad as kitteh tho...

~t

Published!

I just found the reference for a paper I helped with a few years ago... it was finally published! "River terrace development in response to folding above active wedge thrusts in Houli, Central Taiwan", Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, Volume 31, Issue 3, 2007. Those of you with access to science-direct or subscriptions to elsevier journals can access the article here.

I am the fourth author of five, but I definitely spent a solid month doing the analysis and figures for my contribution. Hopefully my first paper as first author (to be submitted sometime this fall, fingers crossed) will be in a journal that is a little more widely read, but as long as I start publishing before I get scooped I'll be happy...

~t

Earthquake correction

Ha,

I thought it felt a little bigger than 5.3.... the Taiwan central weather bureau, monitoring agency for the more than one hundred seismometers stationed on the island, have reported the earthquake from the other night at 6.0

USGS, using a global array and being positioned on the opposite side of the globe, have considerably less constraint on the near-field data of the event... I tend to trust the local knowledge... after all, the Taiwanese are experts on seismicity almost by default of living smack in the middle of not one, but two active subduction zones and one of the most active subaerial orogenic wedges on the planet. Even the USGS seismic hazard map for Taiwan shows almost the entire island scoring off the chart on predicted seismic activity.

cool.

~t

How stupid do you have to be???

Global warming bill faces stiff GOP opposition

A character's quote in a book I recently read said something like, "Genius has its limits, but stupidity is not constrained thusly." The GOP appears to me to be the very embodiment of this fact. "The cost is too high", "The people will suffer", give me a fucking break. It still boggles the mind that the very concept of global disaster seems somehow insignificant to these people when compared to the increased taxation of their beloved corporations. Do they think scientists are lying to them? ..that we as a community somehow harbor some ill-will toward their financial freedoms? I could care less if these same assholes stay filthy rich for the rest of their lives, but what I do mind is their head-in-the-sand approach and belief that they won't have to pay the ultimate price like the rest of the world if they don't realize that we (meaning humankind) are all in this together. we don't get a do-over. climate change and all it's associated challenges is already the primary threat to our way of life, and our very lives... bar-none. get it through your unbelievably thick skulls already.

...maybe they're just counting on The Rapture and are really that selfish, so as to spin around in the air on the way up and yell down to the rest of us heathens,

"suckers!"

~t

Bolognese

Bolognese: served ~4

braise about 10 beef bones with several smashed cloves of garlic, fresh rosemary and a bit of dry lager, Kirin or Asahi. remove the bones (save!) and rosemary once the liquid has been reduced by 1/2 - 2/3, add a little olive oil and a small mixing-bowl's worth of chopped cherry or grape tomatoes and nice chinese eggplant (sweeter and softer than your standard aubergine). toss and coat with the mix in the pot/wok and simmer for a few minutes. add pinches of salt and pepper, then a splash of dry red wine like Tempranillo or Rioja. simmer the wine down, then add a little prepared tomato marinara and tomato paste (not more than a cup combined). this is your sofrito. once the vegetables have begun to soften, turn up the heat to high and add a half pound of finely chopped beef: this shouldn't be too lean but not chuck either, use whatever you like as long as it's fresh. sear the beef and tomato skins, then turn back down to low-med-low... add 5-6 finely sliced porcini mushrooms, a few sprigs of fresh oregano and thyme, stir and simmer for a bit. taste. maybe a little more wine, if not in the sauce then in a glass for you. if needed, add a little more salt, pepper. I add another tablespoon or three of olive oil (extra virgin, of course) and a small splash (1-2 tsp) of balsamic vinegar to brighten the acid a little. done. the texture should be reminiscent of thick chili and the flavor should be mellow but deep and meaty. serve with (preferably fresh) tagliatelle and the rest of the bottle of wine. some fresh brandywine tomatoes with basil and some aged parmesan on the side make it perfect.

~t

Tarka in Taipei redux

back again... Yesterdays recconoitre to Miaoli was mission successful. Of course it wasn't a militaristic exercise (rather one of international cooperation) but sometimes it feels like a battle, just sitting though a 16 hour deluge of intellectual bombs dropped on you by your academic superiors and industry experts. It's no wonder to me, that given the opportunity on the free market, the Taiwanese (painting with a broad brush, I know) have very quickly dominated certain markets... they are smart, motivated and tireless.

It certainly didn't help that I only managed a few hours of sleep the previous night... thanks in part to a nice dinner that went on later than it should have (I made a rustic bolognese sauce that started with braising beef bones, more on it later). The real shock came in the form of Surface Wave arrivals from the 5.3Mw earthquake we had that night. Granted, 5.3 is pretty small. By a seismologist's standards it's barely worth putting down your coffee for (though if you did put down your cup it might not even spill the coffee) but it was certainly enough to wake me from sleep. Oddly, this was the first earthquake I've experienced that actually woke me up... I've slept though a few before. It's an odd sensation to describe; like having your bed attached to elliptical orbit linear actuators, or more simply being shaken very smoothly but strongly. The first acceleration is a bit like the feeling of nodding off in seminar, smooth and suave but enough to grab your attention. Then the accelerations quickly build and oscillate and, then, slow as smoothly and suddenly as they started.

                  wom - woom -
- WHOOOM - WHOOOM - WHOOOM - WHOOOM -
                                                        - woom - wom

I woke with a start and got out of bed, pulling on pants and walking into the hallway where my hosts (PhD's currently working on post-doctoral work in coseismic neotectonics) were also a bit wide-eyed but all of us were smiling. "Cool" was what came out of my mouth and the statement was echoed by my hosts. The frogs in the garden outside had been quiet till now but spent the rest of the evening nervously singing in noisy concert and stopping in perfect unison at each humanly imperceptible aftershock. My fight-or-flight response had been triggered by the sudden awakening and so I spent a good deal of time trying to fall asleep, all too aware of the frogs' sensitivity to vibrations in the ground.

~t

update:

to "apologies" below... better (and shorter) cut and scratch video from Japan. unreal.

Still cloudy and cool in Taipei, thanks to the passing typhoon deflecting the mainland jet-stream. work is slow...

~t

"bewitched"

curves arcing lines in skin, form perfect in the expression of a nature, both carnal and caring, silk and cool with depth and wonder, fluid grace of muscle memory from pain and practice, seem born to you and yet earned unequivocally, thunder and lightning reminding of my impressions electric and blinding but soothing and captivating, water flowing and feeling of rivulets on flesh, goosebumps rising to greet sensation and arousal of so many things deeper than surface, reminded constantly by images and occasions simple and new but familiar in recognition, of truths and dreams, unconscious coming to life and realizations sometimes late or even frightening or unsettling in the power of their roots, like trunks of maple and oak, firm and unswaying though attempting to look past, paths separate at once and similar if not parallel, merging or perhaps only linked through anastomosis, life currents carrying quickly but ultimately steerable ways wended, priorities questioned to be introspectively analyzed, logic has little place in the ultimate end when subconscious wants persist beyond these arguments, returning to blue and black and pale alabaster peach epithelium, a smooth scar of recognition not painful but permanent, enriched by the experience but torn twixt divergence and finally bewitched.

~t

...it started with the word, walking through the streets of Taipei as lightning sparkled in the heavens, then a rhyme rolling around as the thunder came and it was jotted with keys in the subway in less than a minute. sometimes flow of consciousness works that way...

apologies...

...but I just can't not share this vid. I know most of you read this blog for the writing that occasionally shares some interesting insight into the world as I see it, be that the eastern or western worlds, academic or sporting worlds, occasionally creative worlds or just my own world... right now I'm not feeling very motivated to write anything insightful or even do work (yeah it's saturday and I'm in the office at NTU Tai-Da) so I'll post yet another youtube video that caught my eye. Japanese phenoms DJ Sara (9 years old) and DJ Ryusei (6 years old) scratching and cutting to some electro beats. pretty amazing; they have already played gigs like the Warner Music Group's 2008 Grammy Show.. they have to be the coolest kids in their class (uh, what, that's 1st and 4th grade???)



~t

...with due respect to Shigeki Kuroda

~t

Microtone Kitchen

Random culture of the day: experimental scratch-artists -->

Microtone kitchen is a group of young turntablists from "Quebakistan", Canada (their term, not mine). They've attempted a melding of melodic composition and DJ scratching techniques and met with some varied success, but it's interesting to see the result even if they don't always achieve the most smoothly flowing rhythm. They're still fairly new and the reality of getting four or five turntablists spinning in synchronous concert is harder than one might think. That being said, I think they're on to something and will only get better as they learn to limit the Technical and favor the Fluid. A word of warning... if you're not a fan of highly modified percussive syncopation in music, don't even bother with the clip below.

From their myspace:
"The use of turntables, piano and guitar, together in one musical breath, is based on an effort to bridge the gap between musical devices of different traditions. Whereas guitar and piano have extensive histories in practice, the saga behind the turntable's use as an instrument (both rhythmically and melodically) is relatively new. Technically, the fusion of these instruments combines various pitch articulations in both diatonic and microtonic scales. Examining microtones with a ground in the classical system reveals new ways in which the psyche reacts to music."


note: their recorded sessions sound a bit more well-polished than the live clip above... I still like it.

~t

quick pics

small lizards feast on winged insects after a heavy rain, Taipei


flowers in the mountains, Alishan range


mural at 'Tiger Mountain' elementary school, Tainan

~t

mmm-mmm, savory!

I've spent the last week traversing the longitudinal entirety of Taiwan. A new bed every night, hours in a car each day, probably close to ten thousand meters of cumulative elevation change. A swim in the Pacific ocean, hikes in both the Hsueshan and Alishan mountain ranges and a plethora of terrestrial, aquatic and benthic organisms ingested. Besides the mild exhaustion resulting from a week of traveling over eight thousand miles (ok I admit some of that was in a plane) I feel enthused about extending my stay here an additional two weeks. At least now I get to sleep in the same bed each night.

While here I've managed to make some very important new connections with researchers and also reconnect with some who I already know... I have also managed, by the greater grace of who knows what, to acquire a newly expanded dataset provided by the researchers at a certain eastern hemisphere oil company. This of course is data that only a handful of western scientists (read: three of us) have access to and is not published anywhere (at least not in English-language journals) so I have decided to extend my stay here another two weeks in order to work closely with the people who have been instrumental in this acquisition. The goal, as it stands, is to reach some new understanding of this information and be able to act on it immediately while I can still meet with the creators of it face to face and ask questions, so that when I get back to Colorado I am able to synthesize everything into a paper which incorporates my existing/previous works and the new info. Exciting, a bit daunting, but overall very positive. ...perhaps "fuckin' awesome" is a better descriptor. I'll be submitting a manuscript to 'Tectonics' hopefully by the end of the summer.

On a side note, I'd like to share something that made me laugh out loud recently. While driving over the Alishan range our group stopped for lunch at 2500 meters, near the terminus of the train-line that joins WuShan Mountain to ChiaYi city. The weather up there was a welcome escape from the sweltering foreland of Taiwan; so often swamped by high humidity and crushed by the weight of this planets tropical latitude atmosphere. In stark contrast to the lowlands, the mountain parks offer breathable air and cooler climes worthy of light sweaters and rain parkas (in Taipei, wearing GoreTex gives one the sense of being zipped into a body-bag with an electric steam-iron). We chose a small restaurant that looked inviting and most importantly offered some refuge from the ceaseless drizzle and served hot Oolong tea. A quick scan of the menu (which had english transliterations) showed that there were the standard assortment of traditional chinese dishes, but also some more interesting offerings of aboriginal taiwanese origin... the second item in this list really caught my eye:



I ended up going for the stir fried wild boar, which was quite tasty. I decided to leave the fried guts (from an unspecified animal) for another time.

~t

I've never heard of this before

Check it out:

Puppy is born green

who knew?
~t

Mw 7.8 in China, 8500 deaths estimated...

this just happened while we were all asleep last night:

BBC report of Sichuan earthquake

USGS Moment Tensor and Scientific summary

If you want to know what a true "Active Thrust" is capable of, read the USGS summary. Scary stuff. This is why I want to go into geo-hazard assessment....
~t

... on a lighter note:

Sheesh... I had this post all planned this morning, but after reading about the 7.8 it's kind of weird.

Anyway, today marks the eve of my next trip to Taiwan... a short two-week jaunt with my advisor throughout the island. I've been running around and feeling a bit scattered for the last few days, and today isn't really any different, except for the fact that it's the eleventh hour. The odd thing about me is that this is when I am the most calm, and the most productive... I have a lot to do, but I know that it will get done.

This morning I stopped by the neighborhood cafe to get some coffee, and decided to get a fruit smoothie instead. I suppose I should have asked, but the menu says simply "raspberry mango smoothie", not "raspberry mango fruit smoothie"... Upon lifting the very bright pink slush to my lips, I was overcome by a wave of high fructose corn syrup and citric acid. I asked the barista if there was sugar in the smoothie and she sort of looked surpised, answering "it's from a mix". I left the drink on the counter and said I wasn't worried about a refund when they asked (they were really busy). I suppose it's only in Boulder (I'm sure in NYC I would have been told to get bent for complaining) but when I politely suggested that perhaps they should let people know that there isn't actually any fruit in the beverage, or at least that there's lots of sugar, they apologized and gave me a card for a free drink. It seems likely that it's a result of doing business in the people's republic of Boulder... that if something's not made of organic fruit, it's justifiable grounds for complaint, apology and refund. As ridiculous as that sounds, I'm not complaining about those standards.

~t

Jenkees!

I know it sounds like something Velma Dinkley would say, but actually it's the name of my new favorite You-Tuber, Ronald Jenkees. I ran across his stuff completely by accident, but I was captivated by his quirky style and impressive musical talent. Ronald is a self taught Keyboardist and Beat Producer who, at 4 years old, started lessons on piano but soon quit because his teacher wasn't into letting him Jam. He took it upon himself to learn the keys and it shows in his unique finger style ... it almost looks like a four year old playing sometimes, combined with the skill and soul of someone who's played their whole life. The most striking thing about watching his videos is the apparent bliss that playing brings him, and for anyone who has really played any instrument before it is instantly recognizable. Check out the video below, and then go see ronaldjenkees.com.



~t

french press

why does the coffee that I make out of my french press always taste a little off? Still trying to get things done, realizing that it's friday and I only have 4 days (max) to do it in. I know that these will be done before then, but I also can see myself pushing too hard and getting sick, so I'll be trying my best to remain relaxed... it's too bad that my motivation doesn't spike until dealing with deadlines. It's also too bad that I'm such an whore for inane anal-retentive details. I obsess about crap like whether an active axial surface is oriented at 78, or 77 degrees from the fault surface at depth. Anyway, it's about the time when I finally realize that I just don't have the time to be worried about fine details, and I need to get the whole thing roughed out.

Friday feels like Monday today, but seeing as how Monday is the eve of my departure to Taiwan I'm going to try to treat that like a Friday... makes sense, no?

~t

Life Ambitions

heheh, I just saw the most recent PhD comic strip... I'd like to share ;)


I just had a brief exchange with my advisor about work this week, and getting ready to fly out from Denver to Taipei this coming Tuesday... Apparently he didn't understand that when the ticket says we arrive in Taipei on the 14th it means we leave Denver on the 13th, so his plans to lead a trip into the needles district of Utah this weekend just got more complicated. I knew we were leaving on the 13th, but it doesn't make the work that I have to do before then any easier.

At the moment I'm taking a minute to look around the net for new news (check out the eruption in Chile) and enjoy my "Rizzbapple" fruit smoothie. Today is also the first day that I'm letting my finger air-out after almost cutting the tip off on sunday; my obsession with keeping my cooking knives razor-sharp has its downside. Maybe I should get my hands on some "pixie-dust".

~t

Bakfiets!

I found a few fun pictures on my morning internet news & random image surf and thought I'd share them here. The Bakfiet is the cargo-bike with all the dogs in it. They're from the Netherlands and most of the images on the net of these shows parents carting loads of kids around in them, they are awesome, I'd love one. The second image is funny because of the little kid sitting in the saddle-bag... it's probably on a par with me riding in a plastic milk-crate bungeed onto the back of my dad's road-bike when I was a kid. The last one is funny just because the woman is commuting while wearing some pretty high-heels. That last image is from a blog site called 'Copenhagen Cycle Chic', which is dedicated to images of nicely dressed people commuting in European cities...






~t

Inmates have too much time on their hands

I know it sounds like a headline from The Onion... a man in a U.S. prison is suing the county which runs the facility for "literally being starved to death". First off, no one has been named as having died from malnutrition in this case. Secondly, the guy who is bringing the suit weighs over 300 pounds, but complains that he doesn't receive enough food and lost 100 pounds (meaning that when he was committed to prison he weighed over 400 pounds). The best part is that he complains about feeling dizzy and having blurry vision when he tries to exercise... not to appear callous or prejudiced, but come on!! --DUDE-- YOU ARE MORBIDLY OBESE, I would be shocked if he DIDN'T feel light-headed and short of breath when trying to exercise.

So, I would hope that this 'plaintiff' realize that he could probably stand to lose another hundred pounds, and that even with an intake of 3000 calories a day he's experiencing the benefits of expensive and dangerous surgeries like Ring Gastroplasty without having to go under the knife. I'm not saying he should be happy he's in jail, I'm just saying it's ridiculous for him to be suing over 'starvation'.

Article from the BBC

~t

"The beauty of asymmetric warfare"

Hacker attacks on governments and countries are going to become much more common and much more severe in the coming years, according to the world's elite hackers who met in an international conference on the future challenges and foci of hacking recently.

From the BBC:

Roberto Preatoni [is] the founder of the cyber crime monitoring site, Zone-H. He told the audience that the attacks in Estonia were a harbinger for a new era of cyber warfare. "Even though Estonia is one of the world's most advanced countries in IT technology, the whole economy was brought to its knees... That's the beauty of asymmetric warfare. You don't need a lot of money, or an army of people. You can do it from the comfort of your living room, with a beer in your hand."

___________

Hmmm.... this guy sounds like a moron in my opinion. The "beauty of asymmetric warfare" he talks about is surely lost on the ethnic and/or political minorities of nations like Darfur or Zimbabwe. In the mind of a hacker, it seems, the intellectual triumph of the individual over the establishment is the pinnacle of war... but no matter how "beautiful" they perceive such attacks to be, I'm sure that any hacker would change their tune if they ever found themselves on the losing side of asymmetric warfare.

~t

physical humor

As I was walking to my office this morning, I passed through the physics department and paused to read a comic that some grad students had put on the door to their basement-dungeon-office... I thought it was funny enough to share:



~t

just weird

...how would you feel if a creepy replica of your head was affixed to a walking robot body? It kind of reminds me of Matt Groening's cartoon, "futurama" where the disembodied heads of famous politicians and actors live on in big jars and interact with people from the 30th century. ..kind of gives a new lean to "heads of state".

~t

workin

hahaha... I have a meeting with my advisor tomorrow and I have tons of work to do tonight!! I had a peek at what my existing cross section looked like after not working on it for quite a while and I spent most of the morning hours deleting things from it. Then I spent most of the afternoon hours double checking data and then finally re-entering corrected, reprojected, carefully selected and newly collected data. Basically I started over and kept a template. It's surprising to me how much time I can spend taking care of details in preparation for work... I just hope that all that prep time translates into efficient and productive work-time. Take a gander at the gaping white space on the section, and realize that by tonight I aim to have it filled with the somewhat calculated structures that I (hope to) constrain with a host of corroborating data from geodesy, geophysics and geomorphology.



~t

pics below

Hey everybody,

Snow... it just won't leave us alone here! The pics below are all from the last week, but what you don't know is that it was 80 degrees and sunny on tuesday, then snowed all day wednesday. Snow also fell this past saturday, so all in all the thermometer has been getting a workout over the last week; up down up down.

I'm kind of fed-up with snow, I wish spring would hurry up and get sprung...it's pretty though.

~T

some pics

~t

phlaauggh... snow

ok, I'm ready for it to end. Today I checked the weather before riding to school. The website said 50 and partly sunny. I looked out the window, a ray of sun was shining through patchy clouds. I headed out and it started to snow. it was 37 degrees.

Unlike some lucky folks, who get thunderstorms and 70 degree days with sun in April, I get stuck with snow and gusty winds... I am jealous.

>:(


~T

spring morning

rain drops, mist, patchy clouds hang low around the sandstone slabs that form the flatirons. light snow peaks through the clouds there, barely dusting the slabs but a mere few hundred feet lower we get rain drops. the sun occasionally shines through, cutting the chill of the wet morning for a few seconds. early spring. more snow will fall, but from here on precip will mostly be rain. the chance for another verdant april and may is on the horizon but no one knows for sure whether the fire hazard signs will be dialed to green or red. only one month left to catch up on things that have eluded my scholastic focus (or lack thereof) over the last three. plans for taiwan in may, completing incomplete works from december, revisiting what I was supposed to be doing all semester. Somehow the last couple months have just slid by, practically unnoticed; now I find myself feeling lucid and aware but still questioning wtf happened during that time and how. was I so far out of it that I was just here in body?

Periodically I disappear. my thoughts unravel and I'm left with base yearnings for escape, idyllic and various indulgent experiences outside of time. grad school seems to provide a major barrier to experiences such as these, at least in the real world. the last few weeks have seen me spend inordinate amounts of time on introspection: wants and desires, fears, plans, etc. So many of these are manifold, complex in their designs and some might even say pie-in-the-sky, but worth working towards - fighting for. Pure academia appears less and less attractive and public work, policy work, private sector consulting on affairs of human risk, etc all seem more worth everything I am putting myself through here now. What is the real benefit of spending more than a hundred thousand dollars of tax-payers money (yes you are all paying for my education) to pursue a lifetime career of personal mental mollycoddling?

For now I resign myself to doodling cross sections, extracting channel morphologies from digital elevation models, and waxing cerebral about four-dimensional orogenic kinematics.




~t

dumb wall

there's a wall that I like to ride on near campus. one who wishes to ride the wall must hop from a parking lot, up onto the wall, then jump off the end onto the sidewalk below it. this is of course on a bike, just in case that wasn't clear. my riding style is much more about linking objects and keeping rhythm and less about sessioning single tricks. so, check out the wall:


...for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to go ride aggressively immediately following a week of sitting in a car, no mind the fact that I was exhausted and a little off-balance. I made a half hearted attempt at the wall (weak effort, not really committed) and what do you know, it kicked my ass. Luckily I guided my face away from the stone walls edge (I was wearing a helmet) but plenty of other parts got hung up on it, I was ejected, flipped and unceremoniously dumped on the sidewalk. Lots of people driving by were treated to the rare sight of a 28 year old man eating it hard. below is a diagram, made with google's free 3D sketching software.



~t