Asymptotia http://asymptotia.com Fri, 24 May 2013 16:16:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 Small Short Film http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/24/small-short-film/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/24/small-short-film/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 16:13:25 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14147 (Pause...) Yep, on reflection, I think I will stay away from all the obvious juvenile jokes that spring to my mind... See the film here: There's a "making of" film (of course), which you can find below, along with some [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/24/small-short-film/feed/ 0 Sketchy Look http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/22/sketchy-look/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/22/sketchy-look/#comments Wed, 22 May 2013 23:00:36 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14133 magazine_sketch_18th_May_2013On Saturday I decided to have a bit of simple relaxation at home, and sit on the patio with my notepad and some pencils and draw a likeness. I'd not done any practice from images for a while, and frankly my pencil work was very rusty and needed a workout. So I dug out this month's issue of a sewing magazine that I subscribe to (what?! well, it's a long story... let's move on) that happens to sometimes have interestingly lit and well reproduced photos of faces and sketched for a while. It was fun (even with the slightly flawed outcome). (Click for a larger view.) -cvj]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/22/sketchy-look/feed/ 6 Something’s not quite right, perhaps? http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/22/somethings-not-quite-right-perhaps/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/22/somethings-not-quite-right-perhaps/#comments Wed, 22 May 2013 20:10:45 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14127 thing_vs_thing Yeah. Scary, right? I woke up one morning to this result (see earlier posts here, here, and here) from a night of an intensive computer run. It was not meant to be a straight line, but pretty close to it, so I knew that something was wrong with my code. Took me a good long while to trace the problem, but I did in the end. My signal was being swamped by both [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/22/somethings-not-quite-right-perhaps/feed/ 0 Ok, Here Goes http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/18/ok-here-goes/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/18/ok-here-goes/#comments Sat, 18 May 2013 17:20:23 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14121 book project with you, so here's an update: ok_here_goes Yesterday I completed a short burst of activity in which I re-did two pages in a story that were just horrible to behold. This is a panel form one of the pages. I'm pleased [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/18/ok-here-goes/feed/ 8 Bad Luck for Kepler http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/15/bad-luck-for-kepler/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/15/bad-luck-for-kepler/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 05:13:49 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14112 Steinn has a nice post about the sudden ending of the Kepler mission, due to a crucial component failure. As he notes:
"Kepler has discovered almost 3,000 planetary candidates, of which about 100 have been confirmed through a variety of techniques, and, statistically, most of the rest are likely to be real planets. Kepler has not quite found earth like planets in the habitable zone, yet. It is heartbreakingly close to doing so."
Sad to see, especially at a time when science is being hurt so badly by continued [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/15/bad-luck-for-kepler/feed/ 0 Final http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/13/final/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/13/final/#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 23:33:10 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14107 why it is blue to the computation we just did, including understanding the pattern of the blueness [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/13/final/feed/ 3 Happy Mother’s Day http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/12/happy-mothers-day-5/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/12/happy-mothers-day-5/#comments Sun, 12 May 2013 16:16:44 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14102 mothers_day_rose_2013 Happy Mother's Day to all everywhere! -cvj (Look under "flowers" category for roses from past Mother's Days.)]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/12/happy-mothers-day-5/feed/ 1 Baby Harvest http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/09/baby-harvest/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/09/baby-harvest/#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 01:14:07 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14096 baby_squashes Earlier this week I made a very tasty bean stew with some beans harvested from last [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/09/baby-harvest/feed/ 2 Lines of Thought http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/07/lines-of-thought/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/07/lines-of-thought/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 05:46:21 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14089 previous posts.) The last several days (the research parts) have been taken up with more computations. A lot of the time has been spent calibrating the programs, and trying to assess and understand and characterize the inevitable errors that show up, by running the programs and checking the resulting plots of data points against expectations shaped by hand calculations. Calculating on the train to and from work, I've filled several pages of my small notebook with computations, alongside sketches of some of my surroundings as usual (people mostly). As a result (fingers crossed) I think I've now understood all the key aspects of the results I've been getting, and have good numerical control of things. To get such control, I've had to push the error tolerance and the size of the grid of points I'm computing on to regimes where I'm back again to waiting for the better part of an hour for each data point. (One sets up the problem on the computer by making continuous variables, such as space and time, into discrete ones, forming a grid. The problem is then to use various [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/07/lines-of-thought/feed/ 0 A Much Shorter Straight Line http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/04/a-much-shorter-straight-line/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/04/a-much-shorter-straight-line/#comments Sat, 04 May 2013 18:20:19 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14080 LinePlot2 How is the line coming along? It is very kind of you to ask (if indeed you were). Well, there it is to the left. (See the previous post for background.) In the end, I abandoned Maple since it was taking way too long to do each point, and just for the simple example. (When I tried to do one sample point of the complicated example it took 24 hours and I stopped it before it was done!) The point is that Maple does not easily [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/05/04/a-much-shorter-straight-line/feed/ 0 A Very Long Straight Line http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/28/a-very-long-straight-line/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/28/a-very-long-straight-line/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:00:43 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14071 LinePlotThis means that I can't extract the physics I need by doing algebra and other exact manipulations on paper any more. Progress can continue however by using numerical means, employing a computer to solve the highly non-linear equations and extract the juice. There are several steps involved, and ultimately, I want to determine how a certain physical quantity depends on another physical quantity. (I'm sparing you the trouble of knowing what the details of the physical quantities are, since it does not matter for the thing I am trying to tell you. It relates to quantum field theory, gravity, and string theory, which connects the two.) I can see that dependence quite clearly if I simply plot a graph of one versus the other, and in this case I need the computer to work out what the points on that graph are. I actually don't know the answer for the cases I really am interested in, nobody does (that's why it is research!), and so that's what I want to find. I want lots of points to get a nice smooth graph, so the computer has to compute a lot of points, and I need to run it for a long time since I want it to compute the points very accurately. So I wrote a program (in Maple) to work on the problem, studying just one [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/28/a-very-long-straight-line/feed/ 10 Because… http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/26/because-2/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/26/because-2/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:13:21 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14067 garden_wall -cvj]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/26/because-2/feed/ 1 CicLAVia Time Lapse http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/25/ciclavia-time-lapse/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/25/ciclavia-time-lapse/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:40:14 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14062 (I've done one for each of the past rides as well, so search on "ciclavia" for them if you wish.) My thoughts about the ride were posted back on the day, and there's lots of discussion at that post on some of the issues I raised, so go and have a look if you like, and feel free to join in. I did the ride on the Brompton, as usual, and this time I was accompanied by my colleague Krzysztof Pilch, who was riding one as well. We even saw a few others on the way, which was nice. ciclavia_April_2013_mapThe video is a bit flawed, not the least because at some point the top of my bag started puffing up a bit and blocking part of the view. Also, I've not laid on some funky music like the fancy folk do, so it is quite silent. But there it is as a record of most of the 13-15 mile route from Downtown to Venice beach: [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/25/ciclavia-time-lapse/feed/ 2 TED Youth Talk – Hidden Structures of the Universe http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/23/ted-youth-talk-hidden-structures-of-the-universe/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/23/ted-youth-talk-hidden-structures-of-the-universe/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:42:16 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14047 cvj_TED_YouthYou might recall that last year I gave a talk at TED Youth, in their second year of short TED talks aimed at younger audiences. You'll recall (see e.g. here and here) I made a special set of slides for it, composed from hundreds of my drawings to make it all in graphic novel style, and somehow trying to do (in 7 minutes!!) what the TED people wanted. They wanted an explanation of string theory, but when I learned that telescopesI was the only person in the event talking about physics, I kind of insisted that (in a year when we'd discovered the Higgs boson especially!) I talk more broadly about the broader quest to understand what the world is made of, leaving a brief mention of string magnifytheory at the end as one of the possible next steps being worked on. Well, they've now edited it all together and made it into one of the lessons on the TED Ed site, and so you can look at it. Show it to friends, young and old, and remember that it is ok if you don't get everything that is said... it is meant to invite you to find out more on your own. Also, as you see fit, use the pause button, scroll back, etc... to get the most out of the narrative. I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome, except for one thing. WHY am I rocking [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/23/ted-youth-talk-hidden-structures-of-the-universe/feed/ 3 CicLAvia and Festival of Books http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/21/ciclavia-and-festival-of-books/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/21/ciclavia-and-festival-of-books/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 05:46:43 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14021 everything right now. I hope to do another post with my usual time-lapse video of the ride some time later (but soon). They are uploading from my camera right now. All I will give you right now is a shot of the crowds at a typical stop along the route. Also, I will say a few words that will probably get me into trouble. cicLAvia_April_2013_crowd_a The bottom line is that I remain a huge supporter of cicLAvia, and the idea that it is planting in everyone's minds - getting out of your cars and cycling. This is especially important for a city like LA. And it is not just for all the environmental reasons, to do with energy use, air quality, and so forth. I can go on about those but I won't. See earlier posts for that sort of thing. It is also because many people get to properly see their city in these events, which is really important. You can't see it from a car - and I don't just mean all the buildings and wonderful hidden gems I sometimes talk about, but I mean the other people who live in the city with you. That's a big deal, and an important one for when it comes to how we all work and live together. I'm also very excited that the organizers tried this cross-city route, linking East and West, getting West side based people involved in the fun. And overall I enjoyed today a lot... I love the event and will keep coming and keep supporting it. But. But. Yeah, I'm going to say something negative, but only in the spirit of support for [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/21/ciclavia-and-festival-of-books/feed/ 21 Parking Heroics http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/19/parking-heroics/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/19/parking-heroics/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 06:09:01 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14016 previous post, consider using the subway (the Expo line in particular) to come to the LA Times Festival of Books tomorrow. The campus is now very busy and parking is a pain. Look where I had to put my car today*! bat_mobile_2 [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/19/parking-heroics/feed/ 2 Busy Weekend http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/19/busy-weekend/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/19/busy-weekend/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:40:39 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=14003 what_are_you_reading_smaller There's a busy weekend coming up. Somehow, two of the largest events on the LA calendar have been put on the same weekend - rather unfortunately in my opinion. The LA Times Festival of Books (held on the USC campus) is on Saturday and Sunday, and I'm excited about that (as you know I am every year). festival of books giant crossword I recommend exploring the site for the things you might visit (including the book prizes shortlists - awards will be given out tonight, including special ones to Margaret Atwood and to Kevin Starr!), and then go along and have some fun - all in the name of books, reading, and the worlds that are opened up through books and reading. It should be a great day or two out, and the extra great news is that you can take the subway there. The Expo line goes right up to ten feet from the Festival. You step off at the USC/Expo stop, cross from the platform to the sidewalk, and there you are! Books! Food! Music! Etc... CicLAvia, another event that brings thousands of people together in the city, is on Sunday. It is extra exciting this year since for the first time it has a route that fully fits with where I think the event should be in the life of the city - it runs from [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/19/busy-weekend/feed/ 1 How is that Supposed to Work, Exactly? (Part II) http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/14/how-is-that-supposed-to-work-exactly-part-ii/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/14/how-is-that-supposed-to-work-exactly-part-ii/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:12:09 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13995 showed you a little while ago, I thought I'd show you. page_sample_inked(For those of you not following, this is part of the graphic science book project I'm slowly working on. More here.) I got carried away and decided to properly pencil out the whole page and ink it fully, and then I painted the same panel as before. Now you can see more carefully rendered faces according to the design I chose for these characters, and you can also see the backgrounds of the setting a bit more. It is another real location, a very well known place in Europe. (Actually, I spent some days doing research online to try to reconstruct the details of the interior from tourist photographs, and reconstructed [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/14/how-is-that-supposed-to-work-exactly-part-ii/feed/ 0 Changeover Time http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/12/changeover-time/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/12/changeover-time/#comments Sat, 13 Apr 2013 01:15:35 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13979 start_scribbleIt's that time again. I finish a notebook and start a new one. A new book is begun with writing my name and contact information in the front part, in case it gets lost, and an old one is ended with mixed feelings, and that ending is often a bit drawn out. Notebooks go around with me nearly everywhere, and have pieces of me in them in one shape or another, and so it is hard to stop carrying one and start a new one. I've got bits of computations, shopping lists, partial thoughts about projects, design sketches, doodles, snippets of silent conversations between me and another person at a concert or talk (writing it down is often less distracting to neighbours than a whisper), scribbled phone numbers, film, book or cd reminders, and of course lots of practice sketches and doodles on trains, planes, and in automobiles, done almost on a daily basis, sketches done in (and sometimes of) an event, or of a interesting place or structure. (You've seen some of them here on the blog.) Almost everything has a date written on the page, or on a page nearby, which is hugely valuable. changeoverIt's a combination of notebook, journal, playground for ideas, and more. It is a joy to just open it up and flip through it and see so much of the last few months of my life and thought spread out in ink and pencil (and sometimes watercolour). Sometimes I hit on a particularly successful or interesting (or both) drawing that I love to open up and look at from time to time. You can search the blog under "sketches" for things that were in previous books. For example, a few of my favourites from this book are: Sketch of C. Tyler during her talk, sketch during a committee meeting, airline sketch of a national treasure, other airline sketches, a nice grab of a face from the subway, another airline sketch. All of that now gets put on a shelf, since the pages have run out. It is bitter-sweet, as I also like the analogue, finite nature of the whole business. It has a lot of life written [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/12/changeover-time/feed/ 0 How is that Supposed to Work, Exactly? http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/03/how-is-that-supposed-to-work-exactly/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/03/how-is-that-supposed-to-work-exactly/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:55:17 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13964 page_sample_good_roughsWell, yes, I've been a bit busy and so posting has been slow over the last week. But I am still alive, and here I am with a sample of one of the several things I was doing. It is some work on the graphic book project. (You'll be happy that I am sparing you details of tedious committees, faculty meetings, confusing snippets of physics, incomplete musings and computations, etc...) As mentioned recently, I've been doing thumbnails and rough page layouts on one of the stories, and that has been useful for editing and rewriting. I went further and improved an earlier story that I'd written that had mostly been drawn already, and so that encouraged me to do slightly tighter page layouts so as to fit them more closely to the story as it was already drawn, for a smoother final read. I'll need to find [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/04/03/how-is-that-supposed-to-work-exactly/feed/ 0 Lecture Thoughts http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/27/lecture-thoughts/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/27/lecture-thoughts/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:15:52 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13950 waveguide_plot._cropWaveguides are fun. I mean on the page, although I imagine that they are fun to play with as fully realized physical objects too. But I was talking about them in the context of teaching undergraduate electromagnetism, as I am doing on my class this semester. I tell the class after the second week of class or so that we're essentially done, and can all head to the beach since by then we've completed the derivation of Maxwell's equations, which describe fully all electromagnetic phenomena. The rest of the class is essentially a semester of picking various situations in which we deploy the equations and study particular solutions. Of course, they realize that there is reason to stay, since that's really the heart of it - studying those various situations and appreciating the range of delights those equations can yield. Among the most fascinating and delightful of those, er, delights, is light. Electromagnetic waves in general, and we study them in a whole lot of situations, including nipping along unfettered in free space, in conducting materials [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/27/lecture-thoughts/feed/ 6 Outcomes http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/22/outcomes/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/22/outcomes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:25:45 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13940 The Project, and this morning I read it through (I actually broke it into two stories) and turned out to be not too bad so far. Hurrah! Reading it next to the completed rough visuals really helps. I wish I'd had time to work on more stories, but that's for another time. I'm just thankful to have had the time to have a good focus on one. figures_20th_march_2013_smallWednesday I went back to that studio I visited on Monday as they were having another drop in and draw session and I felt it would be a nice end-of-long-work-day relaxation to go again. The model was actually rather excellent, and I wish my speed was a bit better to catch some of her faster 2 minute poses since she had a great [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/22/outcomes/feed/ 0 Congratulations! http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/21/congratulations/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/21/congratulations/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:55:45 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13930 http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/21/congratulations/feed/ 7 Known Unknowns Decreased a Bit http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/21/known-unknowns-decreased-a-bit/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/21/known-unknowns-decreased-a-bit/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:12:28 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13922 There's a ton of data, and a raft of papers with analysis and conclusions. And there's a very nice press release. I recommend looking at it. It is here, and the papers are here. The title of the press release is "Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe", and some of the excitement is in the "almost" part. A number of anomalies that were hinted at by the previous explorer of the CMB, WMAP, seem to have been confirmed by Planck, and so there are some important things to be understood in order to figure out the origin of the anomalies (if they ultimately turn out to be real physics and not data artefacts). [Update: Andrew Jaffe has two nice posts I recommend. One on the science, and the other on the PR. Jester also has a nice post on the science from a particle physicist's perspective.] What is the title of my post referring to? Well, the refined measurements have allowed us to update some of the vital statistics of the universe. First, it is a bit older than previous measurements have indicated. The age is now measured as 13.82 billion years. (I'm already updating pages in the draft of my book...) Second, the proportion of ingredients [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/21/known-unknowns-decreased-a-bit/feed/ 3 Lunch and Work http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/20/lunch-and-work/ http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/20/lunch-and-work/#comments Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:44:13 +0000 Clifford http://asymptotia.com/?p=13908 Productive day yesterday, more or less. Yesterday's lunch break (in my undisclosed coastal town) saw me take a pack lunch over to the beach, for a bit of reading while I sat in a change of scenery. I'd brought the bike, and so it was nice to be able to pack up some things I might need, like a beach towel, a portable seat (just in case.... I did not use it in the end...), my notebooks, and some reading materials on the ipad (I was reading a bit of Paradise Lost, in fact), and carry it in the bike basket. (Actually I did use the portable seat... but not for sitting. I used it as a stand for the camera that took the shot above right.) What am I doing on The Project? I'm mapping out and editing one of the stories. It has turned into quite a long one with lots of complexity, relatively, speaking. This means that I need to be careful about designing the layout on the page, and actually try to get a good sense of how everything fits so that I pace things properly, and page things out in the right way. So I am thumbnailing carefully, going beyond simple thumbnails and doing a first pass rough of the page. It slows the writing down, but will save a lot of time later on. Also, when I turn myself back into the penciller/inker and come to draw all the pages carefully, my job will be much easier, and quicker, as I'll have the directions in the written script and the page layout sketch to guide me. I'll be able to focus more on being the artist and less the writer at that stage. See the right for a laid out page. Actually, using the brushes application on the ipad has been very valuable for this. I've not used it much in recent times, and so it was fun to rediscover it. I've been using [...]]]> http://asymptotia.com/2013/03/20/lunch-and-work/feed/ 0