Things that make me happy: A weekend in Victoria I spent this past weekend in Victoria with a number of skeptics from Vancouver’s Skeptics in the Pub community. About 12 people came in total and we visited the museum, Junior Skeptic editor Daniel Loxton’s studio and met up with a couple more Victoria skeptics. Sonia [...]
Last night was the first night of Vancouver’s annual fireworks show, the Celebration of Light. From my balcony I was able to listen to the accompanying music over Shore FM (104.3 MHz) and could see all the big fireworks over neighbouring condo buildings. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see the smaller ones, but at least there were [...]
It was a few weeks ago now, but here’s Sonia and my new 2010 Nissan Versa SL with an Xtronic CVT transmission. The Darwin Fish and FSM are from EvolveFish. We ended up getting the car for just under $20,000 with taxes, undercoating and a dealer VIP program (free oil changes as long as [...]
It’s mid-July already, when did that happen? I can’t even really account with what I did through May and June. I worked on setting up a terahertz spectroscopy system (which is still jittery and noisy) and trying to get half-decent data about this one sample (with another sample already in line). I filled out an [...]
I stepped foot inside my new lab yesterday. Dr. Dodge’s terahertz lab operates a system that is very similar to Dr. Hegmann’s ultrafast set-up back at the University of Alberta. I also had my first four-hour lab TAing the Physics 130 life sciences lab. We (meaning the students) explored the simple pendulum. I am not [...]
At the BC Humanist Association’s annual general meeting last night I was acclaimed to their board of directors. The BCHA is a registered charity that has existed for over 25 years, but like many humanist associations has seen its membership drop in recent years and its median age has steadily risen. Hopefully, I can reverse [...]
Since I don’t use it very much, I’ve decided to sell my personal digital assistant (PDA) and all its accessories. So here’s what’s on the table: HP iPaq rx3115 Mobile Media Companion – has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SD memory card expansion, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, verified to work with Windows 7 using Mobile Device Center [...]
I think I’m approaching the look and feel that I want for this blog. While I wanted to keep it simple and clean, I realized that I needed to put a sidebar in on the right otherwise text would go on and on and on across the screen, making for a really unreadable chunk of [...]
It is finally starting to look like I can go back to working on terahertz spectroscopy related physics again. After a few months of uninspiring work in atomic physics, I’ve finally been offered a position in Dr. Steve Dodge’s group working with Honeywell’s paper-processing division to develop a terahertz-based scanner for quality control. Specifically I [...]
I picked up a couple books from Chapters yesterday. The first is Writing for the Web by Crawford Kilian. I’ve started reading it, and after only a few chapters it already gives some pretty simple advice for online writing. These include basic things, like understanding that your audience is impatient, so write short, readable sentences. [...]
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