WIth hundreds of paper and ebooks in my reading queue, I need themes to decide what to read next. Why not books with “world” in the title? Presumably they all have some reasonable degree of ambition.

* “The Gone-Away World”:amazon by Nick Harkaway. Post-apocalyptic story of a world fantastically scrambled by some kind of quantum/entropy bomb. Engaging. 4 stars on Amazon, 4.14 on “goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3007704-the-gone-away-world, it is a solid 4. * “The Half-Made World”:amazon by Felix Gilman. A strange world of western expansion and industrial development gone awry. The archetypes of the Wild West and the Industrial Revolution walk the earth, driven by demons, fighting for dominance, against a never-ending western frontier. Even more engaging. 3/78 on “goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8198773-the-half-made-world, 4 stars on Amazon, also a 4 here. * “InterWorld”:amazon by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. Nice YA science fiction title with all the classic memes. Reminds me of the titles I got hooked on – early asimov, heinlein, etc. 3.46 on “goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47701.Interworld, 4 stars on Amazon, I’ll give it 3.5. * “Underworld”:amazon by Don DeLillo. A more literary book than these others, written in a purposefully disjointed style that probably reflects true stream-of-consciousness of people. But I didn’t care about the characters and the plot didn’t advance well. Gave up 25% of way through. Amazon says 3.5 stars, “goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11761.Underworld 3.9, i can’t give it more than 2 stars. * “The Word for the World is Forest”:amazon by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story of Avatar, but subtler, more understated. and written some 30 years before Avatar. “Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7672380-the-word-for-world-is-forest says 3.75 stars, amazon says 4.5 stars. It is a solid 3.5 but the author has of course written much better since then.

* “iPhoneTracker”:http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/. Cool toy to see where you’ve been and feed your feelings of paranoia. * “Portal 2”:http://www.thinkwithportals.com/. Of course. * “Qwiki”:http://www.qwiki.com/. I was kind of excited about this, but I can’t make my own Qwikis? Excitement way down. * “Acorn”:http://www.flyingmeat.com/acorn/. Haven’t bit yet but I’d love something less obtuse than Photoshop. * “Blogsy”:http://blogsyapp.com/. Seems like a brilliant Wordpress front end. * “Issue Bucket”:http://itunes.apple.com/ml/app/issue-bucket/id403133693?mt=8. Nice little frontend to bitbucket. * “You Gotta See This”:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/you-gotta-see-this/id379058646?mt=8. Stupid little stylized panorama camera app for the iphone. Fun. * Office365 beta. The individual apps (word, xl, ppt) are nice and well done. The portal gluing them all together with email and calendar is strange and confusing – two URLs, yet another ID different than my existing ID used at all msft sites, an insistence on downloading software. Chalk it up to beta.

Saving for later reference….

* “Netlib”:http://netlib.org/ * “NIST”:http://gams.nist.gov/ * “Trilinos”:http://trilinos.sandia.gov/ * “PETSc”:http://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/petsc-as/ * “OpenCL”:http://www.khronos.org * “Nividia OpenCL”:http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/opencl/sdk/website/samples.html * “Apple OpenCL”:http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/search/?q=opencl * “NERSC”:http://www.nersc.gov/nusers/resources/software/. ACTS stuff dead?

Here’s what I’d like to see:

* Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones from Tattoo You LP * Tattoo by Jordin Sparks * I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire by The Ink Spots * Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol, themesong from LA Ink * Last Tattoo by Rehab

If our band was the Stanford band, you know this would happen. But then our band would suck.

Completely totally 100% agree with “this gentleman”:http://blutarsky.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/sometimes-the-ncaa-just-makes-me-want-to-puke/.

I don’t understand how anyone with a straight face can propose to generate yet more incremental revenue off the revenue sport athletes, without proposing anything regarding greater compensation for the players. This proposal will generate more money for media companies, for entertainment companies, for advertisers, for the NCAA, for schools. And $0 for the athletes involved. The athletes don’t even get to have a say in the process.

Nuts.

BTW, al.com is running a nice series on “the treatment of players in division 1 revenue sports”:http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2011/04/college_athletes_rights_who_fi.html. Worth a read. And nice pointes to “oversigning.com”:http://oversigning.com/testing/ and the related site “Parents of Players”:http://www.parentsofplayers.com/.

* “Roundest Object In The World”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/02/14/roundest-object-in-the-world-the-avogadro-project/. I could so bowl 300 with one of these. * “Sonic Black Hole”:http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-physicists-sonic-black-hole-lab.html. Bring one of these to your next meeting, watch hilarity ensue. * “Relativistic Statistical Arbitrage”:http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/04/relativistic-statistical-arbitrage.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marginalrevolution%2Ffeed+%28Marginal+Revolution%29. This is why I would make a crappy day trader, I always forget to include relativistic effects.

* “Cleopatra: A Life”: amazon by Stacy Schiff. Bio of Cleopatra, with a sympathetic eye. A little long but she lived a fascinating life. 3.5 stars on amazon, 3.56 on Goodreads. I’d say 2.5, just drags on a little too much.

* “Deep State”:amazon by Walter Jon Williams. Terrible. No character or setting depth. Plot choppy. At one point I searched for author’s name on Internet, I assumed he had died and someone finished the book from his notes. The first book with the Dagmar character was good, but this is not. Amazon says 4.5 stars, Goodreads says 3.5, I do not get it.

* “Cowboy Angels”:amazon by Paul McAuley. Many-worlds conspiracy tale, reasonably engaging. Amazon says 3.5 stars, Goodreads says 3.3, OK this book is not going to win prizes, but it was engaging and way better than the book above.

* “City of Saints and Madmen”:amazon by Jeff Vandermeer. Hey I learned the word “farctated” from this book which makes it a 5 star book just on that basis. This is a very odd and compelling fantasy tale set in a very strange city. I love books that play with structure, this was awesome. And the author made his invented taxonomy of freshwater squid a compelling read – that is an achievement. 5 stars. Amazon says 4.5 stars, Goodreads says 4.

* “gfxcardstatus”:http://db.tidbits.com/article/11982?rss to let me fiddle with macbook pro graphics hardware. which is proving to be problematic. Why does the browser (Chrome) require the high end power-consumptive nvidia chip? Seems like this feature of the macbook is a waste if the browser is always going to force the power hungry chip on. OK hmm, this might be just a Chrome issue as Safari is staying on the intel chip. gfxcardstatus is great for examining status and dependencies! * “techdygest”:http://dygest.net/. Might be a little too digested. But worth a try. * “daytum”:http://www.coolhunting.com/tech/daytum.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ch+%28Cool+Hunting%29. I want to love this but too hard to get going. There needs to be some easier way to populate it with personal data. * “socialeyes”:http://www.socialeyes.com and “dailybooth”:http://www.dailybooth.com. There is something intriguing about the front-facing camera. I suspect there will be a lot more software written around. What will be the first front-facing camera game? (Ignition is an investor) * “greplin chrome extension”:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bjclhonkhgkidmlkghlkiffhoikhaajg. Search of my content seems super fast, i am intrigued. (Ignition is an investor)

Well, winter quarter’s Computation Fluid Dynamics just about killed me. My lack of a solid fluid dynamics basis certainly was a big reason for my struggles. It may have been a bridge too far for me.

Spring quarter will be “High Performance Scientific Computing”:http://www.washington.edu/students/crscat/appmath.html#amath583 and then I will have completed enough credits for my Master’s work. I need to take a breather after that and think about PhD progress and whether I want to really drive the rest of the way or not. I will clearly need to spend even more time on academic matters if I want to continue the PhD chase, and I don’t know how realistic that is given all my other commitments and time limitations.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about our scholarships for Marion County students. We started doing this maybe 10 years ago and are glad every day that we’ve made the investment. The students we’ve helped will certainly make a great contribution to Marion County, to Ohio, or to whatever community they end up in, and hopefully they too will extend a hand someday to help the next generation of students.

3-4 years back, we also were introduced to the Point Foundation, whose mission (in their own words) is to provide “financial support, mentoring, leadership training and hope to meritorious students who are marginalized due to sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” We became a supporter of their scholarship programs, and have continued to support ever since. We’ve heard personally from young kids who were cut off from family support because of their LGBT status, and these stories are just heartbreaking. Casting aside young people because of their orientation is terrible, and so we happily support any effort to give these kids a bit of help in the world. We can never make up for the loss of support from their family or community, but if our financial assistance helps them through some tough times, we feel great about it.

We have been fortunate financially and so we can reach out and help on the financial issues for young people. If you are also fortunate, we’d encourage you to reach out and help a group as well, whether it be kids in your community, or kids in an interest group you care about, or any other set of kids. And if you can’t help monetarily, well these young people need encouragement and mentoring and guidance and emotional support and everything else. Do what you can to help them get ahead.

Seriously. We have much to celebrate. #1 Men’s basketball team heading into tourney season. Big 10 champion women’s basketball team, again. The next 2-3 weeks should be awesome and we should enjoy our successes.

And yes, well, we have this hiccup in the football program. Mistakes have been made by many people at many levels. It is a little embarrassing and not in keeping with the standards we have set.

But the mistakes are magnified by those high standards of on-field and off-field performance we have established. If Ohio State had some 3rd tier football program, no one would care (including us). But we have a great and proud program that has accomplished a great deal and we should remain proud despite the news of the past week.

We all have successes and failures, we all have moments of great personal performance and moments when we stumble. The measure of a person is not how many successes they have – it is how they handle themselves in times of success and failure. When successful, do they share the credit, do they acknowledge the team, do they remain humble, do they treat the less-fortunate with respect? And in moments of personal failure, do they accept responsibility, do they learn from mistakes, do they bear down and fix them?

Our football program has a great opportunity now to act like a winner, to set an example for others, as it deals with the issues at hand. And I expect the people in the program to work hard and handle the problems well and make us proud of how they deal with adversity. There are coaches and administrators in the land who run to new jobs or the NFL when times get tough, I am proud of our staff for putting their nose to the grindstone and working through the troubles.

Again we have great success in so many sports, and exciting basketball to follow, and a great opportunity to show the world how to deal with adversity, and so it truly is a great day to be a Buckeye.

I don’t need or want any of this stuff actually but am drawn to all of it…

* “Car map light”:http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20100526/flexible-map-light/. Ok who looks at maps anymore, but this is nicely designed! * “Multimeter Clock”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/06/24/multimeter-clock-styled-after-the-simpson-260-multimeter/. Love the reuse of old tech here. Wish I had the skill/vision to create things like this. * “Carol Kipling Plates”:https://www.carolkipling.com/product/Gogi%20Seeds%20Glass%20Platter. Love the platter but $2800 is steep… * “14 wheel skateboard”:http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/07/26/the-flowlab-14-wheel-skateboard-can-it-possibly-work/ so I can suck at skateboarding 3.5 times as much. * “Tourbillon vase”:http://www.coolhunting.com/tech/tourbillon.php – awesome organic-looking glass. * “Urban Balance Wave Hammock”:http://www.allmodern.com/Outback-Chair-Company-UBC6XX-OCC1014.html?SSAID=276135&refid=SS276135 – can this possibly be stable? But cool. * “Designer Scrabble”:http://design-milk.com/designer-scrabble-by-andrew-clifford-capener/ I love board games and I love nicely crafted items. I have a great cribbage board, would love to buy great boards for other games – Catan, TIcket to Ride, etc. * “LaserPegs”:http://www.laserpegs.com/. Lasers make everything better, including construction blocks. * “Freesia Book Stands”:http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004652.php – these look awesome, seems like a great item to have. * “Chemically Accurate Crayons”:http://www.etsy.com/shop/QueInteresante?ref=seller_info. OK these are just labels you stick on crayons you buy, so kind of dorky, but I love the idea. “Could you please pass me the Yttrium Oxide crayon”?

For about the 10th year now we are providing funding for scholarships for Marion County residents and Marion County high school graduates. We’ve used different mechanisms in the past, but for the last 5-6 years we’ve done this through the OSU financial aid office as need-based scholarships for Marion County residents or Marion Country high school graduates, any high school in the county, attending any OSU campus. If you know someone who is from the Marion area and wants to attend OSU and needs some help, make sure they ask about!

We have a deep and ongoing connection to the Marion area – we had great experiences growing up there. Much of our extended family still live there and we get back for an extended visit once a year. We are blessed with families who encouraged and supported us to get our educations, educations which have meant a lot to us. And we have fond memories of our time at The Ohio State University. So we want to support the community, the university, and the students who need some help.

And the students who have been awarded scholarships so far are just awesome. We met about 10 of the then-current students a couple years ago at an OSU tailgate and they were all so impressive. Big goals, hard working, youthful vigor – it was inspiring to be around them. Just having a lunch with these students was a huge lift for us.

We’ve never been very vocal about our support but in these times of economic challenge, we felt it was important to become a little more vocal. We hope that everyone does what they can to support and encourage the full development of our young students. Some of these young people will go on to create businesses and jobs, lead our communities, enrich our lives through their art, or otherwise make a great contribution to our lives. Having them sidelined because they can’t quite make the economics of college work out, or having them burdened with a mountain of student loan debt – neither of these seem like good outcomes. So we do what we can, and we hope and trust that others do as well.

OK my pleasure reading is way off because my brain is buried in Computational Fluid Dynamics and also in some pretty interesting things at work. I am reading a ton actually.

* “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”:amazon by Muriel Barbery. A powerful tale, the ending is a gut punch. Totally drawn in by the characters and totally exposed at the end. I’m still reeling. Amazon says just 3.5 stars. Goodreads 3.66, I like this one way more, 4.5 stars. * “The Economics of Intercollegiate Sports”:amazon by Randy R. Grant, John Leadley, Zenon Zygmont. Scholarly look at the NCAA and BCS cartels and how they operate our primary “amateur” sports. Undergraduate economics level, good read overall. Clearly articulates exactly how the NCAA and member universities constrain the opportunities for athletes to benefit the institutions. Unrated on Amazon and Goodreads, but I give it a 4 if you are interested in this kind of thing. The biggest negative is its textbook pricing. * “Lords of the Horizons”:amazon by Jason Goodwin. A somewhat literary history of the Ottoman Empire. It is a very pleasant read but I can’t say it is gripping. I am having problems finishing it because, while it is interesting and very nicely written, it lacks drama. Amazon gives 3.5 stars, Goodreads about the same, I have to stop at 2.5 stars.

I had forgotten how ugly Fortran could be, tho it has gotten a lot prettier since 1979/1980.

And it caused me to reflect on all the programming languages I have used over the years, starting from my earliest days…

* TI-59, whatever language that thing used. I had no idea what I was doing really but was intrigued. * Fortran. Yay punchcards. * COBOL. ugh. * Basic in many forms. Apple’s Integer Basic was maybe the first, or maybe the Basic on the TI 99/4 * PL/1. bad memories here. A command for everything, programming was an exercise in finding the right command. * ASM in 6501, 68k, and x86 flavors at least. I am sure there were a few more in there too. probably my first in depth coding. * Forth. always thought it was interesting. * Pascal. * C and a little C++ tho the C++ came much later of course. still as comfortable in c as anything. * APL. what a terrible idea for a language! unreadable 10 minutes after you looked away from it. impossible to type. * dBase. ok barely a language but useful. * Hypertalk. never anything serious but always fun. * So many batch language variants I can’t remember. * Javascript. * Java. never did much with. * Perl. learned enough to deal with movable type at one point, never loved it. * PHP. * Python. still learning. mostly interested in scientific use with numpy/scipy. * MatLAB.

Sure I missed some. Probably forgot some on purpose due to the pain they caused.