Monthly Archives: January 2007

Today I discovered that most of my results from yesterday were irreproducible, and that my basic sanity checks all fail. My oscilloscope continues to show voltage even when the probe isn’t touching anything, through capacitive coupling. If I short out … Continue reading →

Today I started trying to figure out how to wire up my marginal homemade capacitor for high voltage. The setup was basically a jumble of bare wires and alligator clips with some copper plates. I wanted to measure the voltage … Continue reading →

I got my sonar program working, kinda. It gave wildly wrong answers, but at least it gave an answer. I suspect that I could make it actually work without a lot more difficulty, given two computers over which I have … Continue reading →

To say that details are unimportant would be an understatement. Today I attempted to make phantoms for my experiment. It’s hard to explain what a phantom is. In the world of imaging, you could say that a phantom is something … Continue reading →

Today at work, I began building my apparatus. Thanks to a combination of luck, loose requirements, and flexible thinking, I was able to cobble together a suitable piece of equipment out of spare parts with almost no actual construction. Only … Continue reading →

I felt pretty unproductive at work today, but I got a few things done: notably, making an appointment to set my classes for next term. After work I got back to work on my program, with a brief interruption for … Continue reading →

There was some beautiful snow last night, and throughout the morning, but not enough to amount to a snowstorm. Tonight was Bush’s State of the Union address; it seemed kind of like Geraldo, with all the celebrity guests. I’ve finished … Continue reading →

I haven’t had much to do this weekend, so I’ve been puttering, which is fine, but when I found that I had reverse-engineered the kernel driver for a piece of hardware that I will almost certainly never own, I knew … Continue reading →

A few days ago, I was riding my bicycle down (snow-free) Mass. Ave. when I was passed by a late-80s Toyota Camry covered in snow. It had not snowed in Massachusetts in a month at least, and I don’t recall … Continue reading →

I got my project today. Specifically, I had a meeting with my PI and our collaborator, who presented a very impressive outline of a cool new technique that I probably shouldn’t talk about too loudly. My job is to see … Continue reading →