Fall quarter kicking off, hurray! Formal coursework will be ME 588 – Dynamics and Vibrations. Basic theoretical framework, single DOF systems, multiple DOF systems, and continuously driven systems. Not my first choice of material but need to take remotely and the options were few.

Informally, I’ll be working on modeling of dielectrophoresis effects at the nanoscale, applied primarily to biological sensors. Some finite element, some matlab, some fluids, etc. Interesting study of forces and motion at the nanoscale. I’ve ordered a bunch of texts on electrodynamic modeling and and cranking thru. The mechanics are new to me, the electrodynamics are familiar but rusty, the coding work is relatively straightforward. Initial model focus is on 2D systems tho I’d like to step up to 3d, tho this is of course substantially more complicated.

* “Tilt-shift Van Gogh”:http://www.artcyclopedia.com/hot/tilt-shift-van-gogh.htm via “Scalzi”:http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/09/23/your-whoa-dude-moment-for-today/. Because tilt-shift makes everything better. * “6502 simulated in javascript”:http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html via “adafruit”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/09/18/6502-visual-simulator/. Freaking awesome, my first significant personal coding was on a 6502 (Apple ][), I wish I still had the code so I could test it out. * “Glass speakers”:http://www.gstspeakers.com/. Outrageously expensive but oh my gosh cool. * “Carlashes”:http://www.carlashes.com/. To be surreptitiously applied to your sibling’s car.

* Michigan is a “25 point favorite”:http://www.vegasinsider.com/college-football/odds/las-vegas/ over Bowling Green this weekend. Really? Did anyone watch Michigan give up 37 to UMass? Not a betting man but tempted to start. * Ohio State ranked “11th by Sagarin for purposes of BCS”:http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt10.htm. With a string of weak opponents still on the slate, this is a little concerning, tho if OSU wins out, its position in the human polls is pretty unassailable. My gosh, USC who has looked awful is ranked well ahead of OSU. * Yay Duke is “#1 in kickoff return yards!”:http://espn.go.com/college-football/statistics/team/_/stat/returning That happens when you are always returning kickoffs because you’ve been giving up scores left and right. * Yay “OSU is #1 in field goals”:http://espn.go.com/college-football/statistics/team/_/stat/kicking. Ignoring the implications for red zone ineffectiveness, this might lead you to believe that OSU special teams are doing great. Which they are not.

A rough day to try to follow the Buckeyes from Seattle. Comcast sorry, Xfinity is only carrying one BigTenNetwork feed, the Michigan/UMass game. And while I am enjoying the schadenfreude of that game as Denard comes back to earth (and wow does Michigan’s D suck), I would rather watch OSU.

Yes if I had Dish or DirecTV I could watch, but I don’t want to go thru the brain damage of switching video providers just to watch one game that was over on the first possession. Fail one, why isn’t there a PPV option on Comcast?

Next try is to watch online via one of the many purported video streams. None of which work. The pure web ones all are hosted on various sketchy domains, most of which want me to bet on something, and none of them seem to show any video. Fail two, why oh why won’t the Big Ten Network let me buy a stream?

3rd try is to at least listen to the game via a stream from the official radio station, WBNS. They will let me pay for a single game or season of audio, $4.95 for a game, good for them! But of course their embedded player doesn’t work on a Mac.

Now I am reduced to listening to “Scarlet and Gray Sports Radio”:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scarlet-and-gray-sports-radio on ustream which is a fairly amateurish play by play but at least it works. Oh and it appears to be on a delay, since the “ESPN gamecast”:http://scores.espn.go.com/ncf/gamecast?gameId=302610194 is ahead.

The best live option is Twitter.

Pretty terrible experience overall. I would happily pay a reasonable per-game fee to get something of quality on a Mac or an iPad.

* “Nano Mechanics and Materials”:amazon by Wing Kam Liu, Eduard G. Karpov, Harold S. Park. Fairly dense text on modeling of nanoscale materials and composites. Best approached with a solid understanding of mechanics (not my strength) and finite element analysis (i’m ok on that), as the core idea is to meld macro-level FEA with nano-level mechanical analysis, paying careful attention to the bridging issues. Unrated on Amazon or Goodreads, a quality text. * “Digital Image Processing: An Algorithmic Introduction using Java”:amazon by Wilhelm Burger and Mark Burge. Decent introduction to basic image processing algorithms using Java and ImageJ. If you want a quick explanation of things like erosion, dilation, edge detection, spectral analysis, etc., this is fine. Amazon says 5 stars, I think this is just a good book. * “Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris”:amazon by Graham Robb. I like Paris, adventure tales, and history books, so this should be a total winner, right? But it totally left me flat. Yawn. No emotional connection with the characters or stories. Amazon says 3.5 stars and Goodreads agrees but I find it totally uninteresting. * “City on the Edge: Buffalo, New York, 1900 - present”:amazon by Mark Goldman. A very thorough history of the last century or so of Buffalo’s history. The same tale could largely be told about any declining rust belt city, but the author has a clear love for Buffalo and does a great job telling the tale. Leaves one admiring the city that survives and wistful for what was lost. Way too much detail in some parts for a non-Buffalonian, but still excellent. Amazon gives 4.5 stars, Goodreads 4 stars, this is a very good book.

It’s increasingly obvious that powers-that-be in football at all levels have to make some changes to protect players from head trauma.

MEMS-based accelerometers are obviously super cheap now; why aren’t these in every football helmet made, along with necessary processing and memory to cache results both instantaneous and cumulative. And with results available to a trainer on the sidelines via wireless or some other means.

And if a player’s helmet records a certain level of instantaneous or cumulative impact, then that player is out of the game or practice until evaluated by a doctor.

Additionally this data is tracked over a player’s lifetime and if certain cumulative levels are reached, then the player is pulled for medical evaluation.

This is not some crazy new idea. VT trialed a system in 2007 based on Simbex technology. Riddell had a helmet design in 2007 with some of this. At that time the cost was quoted as $1k per helmet but with Wii controllers retailing at $20-40 MSRP, there is no reason why a lower cost system can’t be devised. Perhaps it won’t have the same level of accuracy and responsiveness as the $1K system but there must be a reasonable low cost version 1.0 compromise.

The game has to change. Measurement is a start. Rule and equipment changes must follow.

Every hour the NCAA spends chasing after athlete eligibility issues instead of chasing after helmet safety issues is an hour misspent, almost criminally so. Yes eligibility issues are important and the NCAA has to address the economics of college football, but the health of the players involved is much more important.

Congrats to them, they won a great game and got a nice pop in the polls and can dream of going to the championship game. Everyone is all like “OMG Boise might play in the championship”:http://bcsguru.blogspot.com/2010/09/boise-state-usc-two-paths-to-national.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+BcsGuru+(BCS+Guru).

But really this is it for them. The “rest of their schedule”:http://espn.go.com/college-football/team/schedule/_/id/68/boise-state-broncos dooms them. They have no chance to further impress voters, they only have opportunities to let voters down. Meanwhile the teams in the major conferences all have chances thru October and November to create buzz. Even if ‘Bama or OSU or other schools drop a game, they will still be able to make it up by clearing the rest of their schedules. Fair or not, I can’t imagine Boise holding a top 2 spot.

* Apparently “some Miami writers think that Ohio Stadium is not that loud”:http://www.thebuckeyebattlecry.com/?p=7515 and some Miami players think that “Everybody wants to come see us. They ain’t coming just to see Ohio State.” Yes that is correct, everyone will want to see the Miami Hurricanes, like they want to see a turkey on Thanksgiving or crabs in a crab boil – fully cooked, dismembered, bits of skeleton lying around. * “EDSBS’s take”:http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2010/9/8/1676569/writer-ohio-stadium-is-not-loud on stadium loudness. The caption on the Tressel picture is understated and OUTSTANDING. * Meanwhile the NCAA is hard at work “suspending players for selling jerseys”:http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/A-J-Green-s-only-crime-was-trying-to-make-a-buc?urn=ncaaf-268222. OK perhaps this player is not that innocent, he did “sell” the jersey to an agent. But when universities are shoveling in the money from licensing fees, it is immoral to whack on this kid for making a buck off his jersey.

Quality start for OSU last night. Diversified offense – tight end and fullback catching balls! Pryor looked Rose-Bowl sharp. Defense was solid tho not as aggressive as you might hope – but that will come as they gel. Special teams obviously need some work!

How optimistic should we be about Miami game? Miami also pushed around an overmatched opponent, winning 45-0 over FAMU.

* Marshall is a much stronger program than FAMU (see “Sagarin ratings”:http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbt10.htm). * Miami had a nice offensive outing, 405 total yards. OSU was even better, 529 total yards. * Miami gained 155 yards on the ground, 4.3 per carry. Nice but OSU gained 280 on the ground, 6.8 per carry. * And of course the game is at Columbus.

* “Rechargeable battery recos”:http://www.tongfamily.com/archives/2010/09/battery-geek/. Rich overbrains rechargeable battery selecting. * “Rich on cables”:http://www.tongfamily.com/archives/2010/04/cables-and-cables/. Good tip on where to buy cheap cables. Amazon cable pricing is pretty good too. Best Buy is ridiculous, someone should go to jail for Best Buy cable pricing. Always better to stop at Radio Shack first for emergency cable needs, tho their pricing is not fantabulous either.

Rich, please advise on shredders next.

Kicking myself totally on this one, “VMWare”:http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:VMW has been on a tear. Paul is a great guy, he has been hiring great guys (who wouldn’t want to work with Paul?), they’ve been acquiring lots of interesting assets. And fundamentally they are on the right side of history. Paul has always been insightful and articulate on strategy and he says it well in this “techcrunch piece”:http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/09/paul_maritz_microsoft_vet_and_vmware_ceo_spars_with_his_former_self.html : “The innovation in how hardware is coordinated today and the innovation in how services are provided to applications is no longer happening inside the operating system.”

This is dead on. You can debate whether VMWare will be the primary beneficiary of this trend versus other cloud providers, but the shift is undeniable.

* Firefox is feeling increasingly bloated, maybe because I’ve got a bunch of plugins jammed in. But trying out “Camino”:http://db.tidbits.com/article/11548?rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tidbits_main+(TidBITS%3A+Mac+News+for+the+Rest+of+Us)&utm_content=Google+Reader on the Mac, seems cleaner and lighter. * “Shuffler.FM”:www.shuffler.fm. Eh, streaming music just doesn’t work for me. My primary listening time is while driving and I need music that I can put on an ipod or cd. When I am at an actual computer I am too busy doing other things. But I like music discovery tools and guides, I just don’t want them bound into streaming. * “GIT for the lazy”:http://www.spheredev.org/wiki/Git_for_the_lazy. Perfect for me. * “Terminal tips and tricks for OSX”:http://superuser.com/questions/52483/terminal-tips-and-tricks-for-mac-os-x and in general SuperUser seems helpful. * I want to love “WiseStamp”:http://www.wisestamp.com/ but I don’t get email addins that assume you are only sending email from a browser. iPhone? iPad? OSX Mail? How can I commit to this thing if I can’t use it consistently? Sigh. * I’m super late to “Windows Live Sync”:https://sync.live.com/home.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0 but it is very useful. I do have a quibble with the naming, once upon a time MSFT was confident enough in its products to give them simple iconic names – Word, Excel, Windows. The company seems to have lost its confidence in products and jams these crazy names on them to try to ride on the coattails of other products. Mistake.

Season kicks off tomorrow, so let’s class up the joint:

_American Football by Harold Pinter

Hallelullah! It works. We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass And out their fucking ears.

It works. We blew the shit out of them. They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelullah. Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit. They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust, Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth._

Awesome on so many levels. From “HaroldPinter.org”:http://www.haroldpinter.org/poetry/poetry_football.shtml, worth reading the discussion there.

“Gelaskins”:http://www.gelaskins.com/. No idea if they are effective on antenna woes, but the artwork is way cooler than many of the skins out there.

* “Wire Bender”:http://toolmonger.com/2010/01/07/wire-bending-the-easy-way/ is a genius little thing. Cheap, rarely used, but the exact right tool for certain jobs. * “Air hose swivel”:http://toolmonger.com/2009/11/10/stop-fighting-with-your-air-hose/ is another simple little thing that is exactly the right solution. * “Rollo Knife”:http://toolmonger.com/2010/02/23/roll-o-was-its-name-o/. Rolling utility knife, purportedly a knuckle saver. * “Butt splicers”:http://toolmonger.com/2010/03/30/fast-electrical-butt-splices/. I am the suck at splicing wires so these might be useful. * “Skoobawraps”:http://www.skoobadesign.com/product/skoobawrap-large-86/. Trying to decide if these are awesome cool, or kind of stupid. * “Fab@Home”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/04/11/fabhome-make-anything/ 3d printers. Seems cool but honestly, the constraining factor on my manufacture of 3d items is not lack of a 3d printer, but is my complete inability to design/draw anything.