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Every so often I'll see a little clip or summary of some work that will evoke some sort of deep interest in me, and not merely grab my attention. Somehow frpm that small bit of information I know this will be a work I'll appreciate, and I am usually right. Such was the case for the Divine Comedy by Dante. As soon as I learned what it was about I pretty much had to read it someday.

It's really tough reading, however, and I didn't finish my first couple attempts at it. I finally got a good verse translation (I can't stand prose translations) to read on my Amazon Kindle (John Ciardi), which is not to say it was any easier reading. But this time I pushed through. (This was facilitated, in part, by my car being out of order for three months. I had plenty of reading time busing to work every day.)

I don't think the overall style of the poem could match me better. Pretty much everything in it was something I enjoyed. The structured, well-thought-out hierarchy of the world, the breadth of cultural allusions (although all the Florentine allusions were a bit too much), the allusions to science and astronomy, the fantastic imagery, and a lot of deep symbolism (about half of which I missed, and the other half I was only alerted to by footnotes). It lacked some of the annoyances many poems have, like wailing self-pity (except for one small part in Earthly Paradise).

But my favorite aspect of the poem was Dante's willingness to break form. In fact, it seemed like he broke form an optimal number of times, just enough so that one couldn't make any sort of sweeping generalizations. Every location he went was like the other locations, yet unique in its own way. This gave the poem an uncanny aura of realism in spite of the fantastic setting.

My favorite such diversion happened in Purgatorio, on the terrace where the Saved souls did their pennance for Sloth. Throughout the poem, Dante and his guide (Virgil or Beatrice) would stop to talk with the people wherever they went, and those people generally had a lot to say. But when Dante arrived at the Terrace of Sloth, the souls didn't stay to talk, since their pennance was to run around the terrance non-stop. The souls would only run by, identify themselves, and run off. So, Dante and Virgil spent their time on that terrance talking between themselves. Dante the Poet wasn't afraid to break the form of his story, even though talking to people in the next world was one of the most important aspects of the story.

All in all a very good read. If you're in a mood for some really tough reading I highly recommend it.

Give someone a boiled peanut and tell them it's a boiled peanut, they'll be like, "This is disgusting". Give that same person a boiled peanut and tell them it's a bean that tastes peanuty, they'll be like, "This is pretty good." It's sad that people are so mentally jailed by their own expectations.

Fish tacos are good unless:

1. you don't like fish
2. you don't like tacos
3. you have mental impediment

We might also note that fish tacos are not the same kind of tacos you eat in a crispy corn shell with ground beef, lettuce, and shredded cheese, in case anyone doesn't know. (I could see that being a little weird.) Fish tacos are actual Mexican tacos, which means fish, shredded veggies, a squeeze of lemon or lime, and a bit of salsa or avocado maybe, on soft corn tortillas. Lots of people who claim to hate fish tacos would love it if you threw the same ingredients on a bun and called it a fish sandwich, or if you serve it without the tortilla and call it fish slaw. Hell, if you serve you serve it with a tortilla, i.e., the exact same dish, and called it fish slaw.

These are some academic papers I've written for school, all for Aerospace Engineering courses. Although none of these are genuine research, nor were any published in journals, I have encountered an occasional proceedings or business publication that cites the web version of these papers.

Searching for Lyapunov Functions using Genetic Progamming (PDF Version §)

Here, I present genetic programming as a possible general method for finding Lyapunov functions. (Lyapunov functions are functions by which one can prove the stability of a nonlinear dynamic system.) This paper describes genetic programming, and how it can be used to find Lyapunov functions. This paper demonstrates that genetic programming is at least worth a better look. I now realize that there is a grave oversight in this method as I've implemented it, although the fix is obvious. [AOE 5984, Nonlinear Control, Virginia Tech]

Self-Tuning Control with Control Allocation (PDF Version †)

This investigates adaptive control: namely self-tuning control which uses parameter identification to determine control effectiveness for use in control allocation. This project is one of the main reasons I decided to abandon my research on on-line parameter identification. After doing this work, I no longer think on-line parameter identification is that important. [ECE 6414, Adaptive Control, Virginia Tech]

A Discussion of Methods of Real-Time Airplane Flight Simulation (PDF Version ‡, slightly modified from what I turned in)

This what the scholarly paper which was a part of my Master's Degree requirements. There are some annoying errors in it, but it's mostly quite detailed and accurate. It describes mathematics and computer implementation of flight simulation.

Composite V-22 Blade Design

Documents my unsuccessful attempt to design a V-22 rotor blade whose shape adapts to the flight condition (hover or propeller) using anisotropic effects of fiber-reinforced composites. Because rotor speed, and thus the centrifugal force, is much higher in hover mode, I wanted to use the extra force to twist the blade into an optimal shape. [Aerospace 597I: Behavior of Advanced Structures, Penn State]

Helicopter Dynamic Stability

In this paper, I do an analysis of helicopter dynamic modes. I am a little amazed that I managed this one, and I think my professor was, too. There's some really advanced stuff in there. As for the results, I doubt their accuracy. They look quasi-reasonable, but I suspect there was a mistake lurking in my code. (Incidentally, although I had to have put at least 30 hours into this project, I whistled through the whole thing. Dynamics just interests me.) [Aerospace 504: V/STOL Aerodynamics, Penn State]

Boundaray Layers

A brief explanation of how boundary layers can really simplify the complicated incompressible Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics. [Aerospace 508: Fundamentals of Fluid Dynamics, Penn State]

The Hodograph Transformation

I describe the hodograph transformation, which is an interesting analytical technique whereby certain nonlinear equations in aerodynamics can be transformed into linear equations. [Aerospace 597D: Topics in Applied Aerodynamics, Penn State]

Project Asterius: Mission to Europa

Here is a report I wrote with my spacecraft design team: Amy Briggs, Becky Carver, Patrick Morinelli, Brian Sarsfield, and Mark Newey. It descibes our design for a Europa Lander. We all learned a lot, and had a lot fun, but our design methodology was utterly terrible. I can't bring myself to read the report any more. [Aerospace 402B: Spacecraft Design, Penn State]

It can be done.

Today I got my car back after two months in the shop after a month sitting in my garage unused (when I was too busy to attend to it). [1]

But I want to make it clear that good public transit was a big part of my decision where to move to where I live now (Santa Monica), and that my job is fortuitously right across from a bus terminal on the other end of the line. [2] In fact, I had been taking the bus to work for about a month before my car's transmission started to go. Around the same time I had a big project at work that was nearing a deadline, and so I never got around to taking the car in for service till a month later.

So for that month and the next two, I took buses (and, in a couple cases, a train) everywhere. Granted, I don't exactly have a vibrant social life, and I have a lot of the stores I need within a few blocks of my apartment. Also, I found that at no point did I have a need to hit anything like a Target [3], which would have been a pain. But the bus was able to get me where I needed to go: doctor's appointments, destinations here and there, and downtown L.A.

So, the next time someone tells you it's impossible to live in L.A. without a car, I am proof that it's definitely possible.

Still, I'm really happy to finally have the car back. In fact, I was so happy I went to the supermarket and filled up a whole cart.

Footnotes:

This fall, I've decided to do something I haven't done in more than ten years: I'm going to watch a full (all-new) episode of the Simpsons.

I distinctly remember the last time I saw the Simpsons: it was 1999 and I was in a Penn State dining hall. It was the one where Mr. Burns masqueraded as a doped-up alien.

When I was at Penn State, the Simpsons was the show. If the Simpsons was on any channel in the lineup back then, every public TV would be showing it (the only exceptions to the rule being football games and this movie). And since I had to eat, and since the dining halls had public TVs, I ended up seeing it pretty often.

Back then I expected maybe three or four more years out of the Simpsons, since it clearly wasn't as good as it had been in the early 90s. At some point I probably uttered something under my breath like, "I'm never watching the Simpons again. Well maybe if it's still on ten years from now (yeah right) I give it another try."

I don't know if I uttered those exact words, but it has been ten years, it's still on, and so I will give it another try.

Looks like seasons typically start around the end of September. I will keep this blog post updated.

One of the main complaints consumers have is about companies who "nickle and dime" them all the time, meaning that they charge small fees for a bunch of things that aren't part of the up-front, advertised cost. Airlines charge fees for baggage, food, and earphones that aren't part of the ticket prices. Banks and credit cards charge all sorts of financing and usage feeds. Hotels charge for extra blankets. And so on.

Personally, I say bring it on.

First of all, we have to address a common myth. People think that companies resort to nickling and diming in order to squeeze out every little bit of profit they can, no matter how petty. Although it's true that the goal of nickling and diming is to increase profits, the idea isn't to profit directly off of petty things.

The fact is, these companies already know how much money to charge so as to maximize their profit margin (or, for airlines, to minimize their losses). Nickling and diming customers will acutally reduce their margins, unless the price increase is offset by a lower base price. And that is exactly what the real purpose of nickling and diming is: to allow those companies to charge less money for their basic service while maintaining their margins.

"But isn't that false marketing?" you ask.

Well, yes, sometimes it is, when the fee is unavoidable. But here's the thing: most nickle and dime fees aren't unavoidable. They're mostly for add-ons: optional amenities on top of the basic service.

Personally, I hardly ever use these optional amenities, and I'm rather happy to know I'm not subsidizing other customers' usage. In fact, I sometime rue how many amenities the basic service includes, thinking how many dollars I could have saved if I didn't have to subsidize those amenities for other customers (especially in hotels). And, when I do use optional services, I'm happy to pay for my own consumption, rather than burden other customers with it. The sword cuts both ways for me.

I don't deny that the actual economics is more complicated than I've presented here, nor that there are many shady uses for the "hidden fee". But the bottom line is, most of the time, nickling and diming customers reduces my price. So I say, more nickling and diming.

Nonfiction is one of the most popular genres of books sold today. It's also the genre with the absolute least amount of imagination when it comes to book titles. In fact, all nonfiction titles follow five basic rules.

Rule 1: All nonfiction books must have both a title and subtitle.

There are no exceptions to this rule. All nonfiction, every single book ever published, adheres to this rule.

Rule 2: The title will be in one of these three forms:

1. <single_proper_noun_or_name>

2. <optional_definite_article> <option_proper_noun> <noun> <preposition> the <noun_phrase>

3. <adjective> <plural_or_collective_noun>

   
   

Rule 3: The subtitle will be in one of these five forms:

1. A <adjective> Look at the World of <noun> in <optional location>

2. The Story/Untold Story/Tragedy/Triumph/Defeat/Victory/Lessons of the <optional_proper_noun> <noun> in <optional_location>

3. How the <proper_noun> Expedition/Voyage/Incident/Experiment/War <optional_prepositional_phrase> Changed the World/Ended Slavery/Is Destroying America

4. A Journey into <abstract_place>

5. The Day/Night/Hour <something_bad_happened>

   
   

Rule 4: Only the subtitle is allowed to identify the book's contents.

The title alone should never, ever be sufficient to allow someone to guess what the book is about. Preferrably, the title shouldn't have anything to do with the contents except in the most abstract, metaphorical sense.

Rule 5: The word "secret" may appear anywhere in the title or subtitle even if it violates Rules 2 and 3.

That's it: these five rules are sufficient to cover the title of all nonfiction books ever published. Let's take a look at some examples of valid titles.

• Great Bass: A Comprehensive Look at the World of Fly-Fishing in Steamboat Springs, Colorado
• Dark Valleys: The Untold Story of the Fall of the Amazon Hunter
• Men of the Tundra: How the Chadwick Expedition Changed the World
• The Pendregoth Scandal: A Journey into the Secret Dark Mind of Barry Goodfellow
• Frozen Blankets: The Night the Cold Came to Okruk
• Bronze Rain: Lessons of the Ambush in Chicketaw Valley
• Broken Eggshells: How the War of America's Youth on our Police Force is Destroying America
• Thomas Jefferson: A Journey into the Secret Life of the Slaves at Monticello
• Secret Sailors of the Silent Service: How the Bluefin Voyage Changed the World

Professional Photograph:

High School Yearbook Picture:

A Candid Photograph:

Another Candid Photograph:

Photograph of the MTS Machine and me:

(Interesting note: The photographer of this picture, Regina

Kauffman, was on the crew of the EC9 spyplane that emergency

landed in China.)

Photograph from my Football Days:

Photograph of me in the Virginia Tech Flight Simulation Lab:

My Brother Victor and me in Tempe, Arizona:

My Mom and me in Nogales, Mexico:

Me standing with the SR-71 in Tuscon, Arizona:

South Park caricature:

Professional Photograph with some interesting image processing:

Photograph from my days as a Calvin Klein model:

On a boat on Lake Waconia:

In a restaurant next to Mom:

A more up-to-date South Park caricature:

I've had a web presence since 1995.

In those 15 years, many things about the World Wide Web have changed tremendously, but one thing has remained the same: my web pages have been almost entirely static. Except for a few minor cgi-bin applications (including the Oracle of Notre Dame in a previous form), all my web content was edited on my desktop, uploaded, and served as-is.

Well, I've finally jumped on the dynamic content bandwagon. Welcome to my new blog. Like any respectable web app, it stores content in a database and retrieves it upon request.

So what pushed me over? Well, it's mostly a matter of the right technologies coming together and getting support from inexpensive web hosts. Until recently (last few years), most inexpensive web hosts only supported dynamic content with PHP (which I will never touch) and cgi-bin scripts. CGI is terrible for anything more than trivial apps. But lately web hosts are supporting a wider variety of web frameworks (largely due to the success of Ruby on Rails, I think).

With that development I began considering to implement my own dynamic content in Python. There are now tons of libraries one can leverage to take care of the gory details (and that's all I wanted—which is why I didn't go with a framework like Django). I found CherryPy to be especially helpful to take care of all the HTTP aspects, while not being overly formulaic to use. The major libraries that came together for my blog are:

• CherryPy manages the HTTP aspects
• Mako manages the HTML templating
• Docutils converts user input to HTML
• SQLAlchemy manages the database
• Elixir set up the SQLAlchemy's ORM classes

I threw together a couple small apps with CherryPy and SQLAlchemy, and then decided I was ready to try for a blog, and here it is.