My knack for checking for software releases on the release day shines again today. Several months ago I had heard a rumor about the Enthought Python Distribution (EPD) being developed for the Mac. Between writing my dissertation and packing up my family for our upcoming move, I hadn’t thought about it again… until today. And [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in physics on June 29, 2008 | 1 Comment »
This is somewhat off topic, but I felt it was a good example of a technology mashup that serves those of us who would like to drive less. Of course it is most helpful to those of us who have a chance to choose a place to live based on how walkable that place is.
Walk [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in physics on June 26, 2008 | 4 Comments »
It’s been a little while since CLEO and my last post. Things have been hectic to say the least. The past few weeks included:
a trip to Forest Grove to look for houses
a week at home with Carter (17 mo. old) while Leslie went to Volleyball tournament
showing our house twice
receiving two offers on our house
signing one [...]
Read Full Post »
I’m currently attending the CLEO/QELS conference in San Jose, CA. Yesterday there was a symposium honoring the late Ted Maiman, who was the first person to successfully build and operate a Laser. After the symposium, I was doing some follow-up reading on Wikipedia and discovered that the timing of this memorial session was very coincidental. [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in computing, mac tips & tricks, open source software, physics, try this at home, tagged google code, latex, subversion, svn, thesis on April 26, 2008 | 3 Comments »
For anyone curious about the process of managing a LaTeX document with the Subversion (SVN) version control system, I have to highly recommend it. Now that my dissertation is officially finished, I have a bit of time to explain the process I used to back-up, archive, and otherwise manage the beast.
Read Full Post »
Posted in physics on April 24, 2008 | No Comments »
It’s finally done. I submitted the final version of my dissertation[PDF] to the Graduate School. Naturally, that means I’ll be headed to the beach tomorrow for a weekend of camping in the sand.
Not that I expect anyone to, but you’re welcome to read it, just as long as you don’t tell me about any typos… [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in physics on April 11, 2008 | 4 Comments »
It’s official. I successfully defended my dissertation today. The process was surprisingly enjoyable. After very little sleep, I still managed to give a good presentation and field a bunch of good questions. My committee was genuinely interested in my work and gave me lots of new ideas on where I can take the research.
I have [...]
Read Full Post »
I’ve made my last revisions prior to handing my dissertation over to my committee members tomorrow (ok, technically that’s just later today). My defense is scheduled for 9am on April 11th so I’ve got just over a week to put together my presentation. After writing 160 pages on my research, I think 20 slides will [...]
Read Full Post »
As you can imagine, during the depths of my thesis-writing experience, I don’t have a whole lot of time for anything except… well, writing my thesis. Sometimes, especially in the sciences, as you are writing the paper, the data is still coming in and ideally still getting better. Lucky for me that was the case [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in optics, physics, teaching on February 27, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I am excited to announce that I will be joining the faculty at Pacific University this fall. I have accepted an offer for a tenure-track position that is a joint appointment between the Department of Physics and the School of Optometry. I am looking forward to teaching physics in a liberal arts setting, and also [...]
Read Full Post »
