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Talk Planning (Eclipse)

First Published: 2023 September 12

Draft 1

First, sorry about the sudden radio silence. If I had to blame anything, I would blame the combination of:

Without further ado, though, I do have another talk in3 just over three weeks. With twenty something days to go, it feels like an appropriate time to shift my planning from completely analog to something with a bit more structure. I’ll be giving a talk on the eclipses that are coming up. I think I’ve mentioned on here before4, but there are four upcoming eclipses on the continental US.5 In order, these are a partial solar eclipse on October 14, a partial lunar eclipse on October 28, a penumbral lunar eclipse on March 25, and a total solar eclipse on April 8 (the first since 2017, and the last until6 2044).7

There are a lot of ways that I could frame an eclipse talk. Having now talked to a number of people who have materials prepared, I realize that I don’t love most of the ways that they do. Being, as I am8, myself, the way that I’m choosing to frame the talk is by answering the following questions9

So, really, only one of those questions actually requires any effort from me. My “What is an eclipse” slide15 will just be a picture of a pretty eclipse with the text definition of one. My “How many kinds” slides or section will be a picture of each kind with a description of how they work.16 My “Why do they happen” slide will just be “wow we’re truly blessed.” My “How do we know” is also pretty easy. Like, the answer is really just pattern matching,17 and the hardest part will be not going off on a rant about harmonics (see footnote).

Now, of course, you’ll notice that I did not talk about “Why don’t they happen?”. And that’s because the answer is really hard.

Ok, so, without graphics. The sun exists. That feels like a good place to start. Since we live in a vaguely heliocentric world18, everything we care about exists in reference to the sun.

Now, we also know that there is an earth. The Earth, in fact.19 The Earth moves around the sun.

Now, there are some fun things about that. Imagine if the Earth didn’t rotate at all.20 We would have one day every year. That would be really bad, I think.21 Even worse, though, the Earth could be tidally locked, which would mean that, at least in respect to the sun, the earth never rotated. Ope, actually, since we’re saying that the sun is the point of reference, we can thankfully ignore the Earth being stationary from an above inertial reference frame.22

Ok so we have the sun. The sun is orbited by the Earth. If the Earth was tidally locked23 we would have half the earth bathed in flame and half bathed in ice.24 Instead, we are lucky that the Earth rotates about four hundred times per rotation around the sun.25

Now, if the Earth rotated around the sun without a tilt, there would be no seasons.26 Of course, as we know, we have seasons, which means that we orbit at a tilt. That does then raise the question of what a day is. After all, if you’re on either of the poles, there would be entire calendar days with no apparent change in the location of the sun in the sky.27 Also, anywhere you are, a fun thing to do is to find that the sun sets later on the days following the longest day of the year than it did on that day. That’s because the day is more than 24 hours during that point. Oh cool, the length of a day can vary by as much as 8 seconds during the course of the earth’s orbit. Hmm, that doesn’t explain why sun sets later.

Oh gosh, it has to do with incident tilt of the earth and therefore apparent amounts of sunlight, along with the fact that the amount of sunshine we get is shifted slightly later, I guess. That is way more than I ever wanted to know and learn, at least for this talk, so I guess I have to leave out the fun fact about how the sun sets later.

Diversions aside, we now have the sun and the earth, which rotates at its tilt across the sun. It’s at this point I want to use blender to animate, because I do not want to hand animate this, and also my ability to animate in python is very limited.28 But, more importantly, we then add in the moon.

So, first of all, if the moon was the wrong angular size in the sky, we would have much different numbers of eclipses. Shoot, I’ll have to discuss angular size here. Actually, is that the first place to go? I think that the first place I should do it is by going “ok so the moon is actually bound to the earth, rather than the sun, which feels weird.”

The moon is tidally locked to the earth, so we only see one face. If you think of it like a mirror, we can see a full moon when it’s opposite the earth from the sun, and we see a new moon when the moon is between the earth and the sun. This is where the question of why not all eclipses becomes relevant.

So first, we have size on sky. If moon big, more solar eclipses. If moon very big, no chance for total lunar.

But, of course, assumption will start with everything in the same plane, because of course it will. Instead, moon orbits earth at an angle. Because of that, we can only have the intersection at certain times of year. This is really what I want the animation for, because the two dimensional static drawings aren’t totally helpful.

Anyways, a friend also said that if I’m interested in public outreach generally, I should start a youtube channel and post my talks there. It’s not a bad idea, for all that I know it would make me incredibly neurotic.

  1. I went home for jury duty, served (technically), drove back to school, went to my first day of choir for the year, had first group meeting of the year, went to an event with friends, went to a baby shower, went to a euchre tournament, went to intro catechesis, and went to a thank you dinner to donors (I was part of the thanking not the giving). On the bright side, I now have a lot of content I can blog about for the next while, assuming that I find the energy↩︎

  2. running? I feel like I only ever think of running out of, not getting out of, but I suppose that either works in this case? maybe↩︎

  3. oh gosh that’s soon↩︎

  4. maybe↩︎

  5. I guess this is technically doxxing myself, but I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that’s where I am, especially since I’ve made comments about living here before, I’m almost positive.↩︎

  6. I think↩︎

  7. why yes, this last sentence was directly copied from one of the abstracts I submitted. How could you tell?↩︎

  8. by need, growth, and choice↩︎

  9. probably in this order, but I haven’t decided if that’s true for certain. Thankfully, in order of how much time I feel the need to spend, making figures is an order of magnitude more than making slides is an order of magnitude more than editing slides is an order of magnitude more than preparation. Since I have no intention of spending the rest of my waking hours on preparing figures, I don’t really need to worry about anything else↩︎

  10. that’s something I feel like I should be able to readily define. Right now I just have “when heavenly bodies get in each other’s way”↩︎

  11. ok so there’s solar and lunar, which is two. There’s partial and total, which applies to both, so four. But then there’s also the fact that the interaction of the sun’s light and the earth and moon results in the earth casting not just an umbral shadow but a penumbral shadow. I don’t know if a partial penumbral eclipse is a meaningful kind, but I still see at least five kinds of eclipse when I quickly google (partial and total solar, partial, total, and penumbral lunar.↩︎

  12. lunar eclipses: Earth gets in the way of the sun’s light to the moon. Solar: oh gosh, so many lucky pieces of orbital dynamics that resulted in the moon being the same orbital size as the sun! wild.↩︎

  13. ok so that’s not really the question, but it like why don’t we have them constantly? Especially once you learn that solar eclipses can only happen during new moons and how new moons form, it is more than a little strange to think about.↩︎

  14. because we, like ancient mesopetamia (babylonia? I forget and should absolutely learn by then) are able to track patterns↩︎

  15. section?↩︎

  16. oof that means I’ll have to explain the penumbra/umbra difference in earth shadow. That’s probably fine though? I mean it’s a pretty easy thing to demonstrate/explain I hope↩︎

  17. had to delete the next line, which did absolutely read “which will be a fun diversion into harmonics. It’s true, and I do still actively believe in the harmony of the spheres and think more people need to,” but this is not the place (something I’ll need to repeat to myself over and over as I prepare these slides)↩︎

  18. I refuse to get into the fact that the sun is moving, because I don’t want it to/don’t think that it should affect eclipses↩︎

  19. hmmm capitalization is going to be an issue for anything written. I’m so grateful that my talks are almost exclusively oral and that I don’t live in a fantasy world where capital and lower case letters are actually audible (also I hate remembering the fact that lower case letters are so named because in early typesetting they existed in the physically lower cases.)↩︎

  20. from an observer staring down on the solar system↩︎

  21. I should probably find an actual citation for that. My imagining that each part of the Earth would boil then freeze may not be entirely accurate.↩︎

  22. a phrase I did, in fact, say to a four year old↩︎

  23. spoiler, like the moon to the Earth↩︎

  24. ok realistically not really, but it’s at least poetically evocative, which is my goal for right now. Facts can always follow from a story, the reverse is not always true.↩︎

  25. the fact that it isn’t totally in line with the orbit around the sun used to mystify me. Now the fact that it lines up so close to nicely and so nicely with the moon shocks me more↩︎

  26. Strictly speaking, the earth’s orbit is not a circle, and so maybe we still would. Then again, the Earth is closest to the sun during northern winter, and I don’t think that the equatorial regions really have any temperature swings, though, again, that’s something I should consider. Ughhhhhh I don’t want to get into the fact that planets have elliptical orbits, but that’s at least something that I should consider for the future video series (which I’ll talk about at the end of this post, because it’s a great idea that a friend had, especially since more and more it looks like that’s where I want my job to end up↩︎

  27. at least during the winter months. Less sure what the sun does in the sky over summer↩︎

  28. shockingly, the programming language is not the best tool for making pictures↩︎

Universe in the Park Part 5

First Published: 2023 September 4

Draft 1

Well, first off, sorry for anyone who tried to read my last post. I apparently completely forgot how to do formatting. I don’t have the spoons1 to fix it right now, but I will try my hardest to remember to do so in the future.

Unlike my last post, this reflection is only on a single Universe in the Park2, rather than five. I think I said this yesterday, but it was not only my final talk of the summer, it was also the final talk of this program for the summer. It had good attendance, for all that the crowd wasn’t as great as I would’ve loved. Most of the first few questions were just polite ways of asking “right, but like, what’s the point?” Thankfully, there were three children there.3 I can always rely on children to ask many and interesting4 questions.

Some highlights from last night include:

As always, after the formal talk portion of the night, I tried to set up my telescope. It was looking cloudy beforehand, so I did not have any of the prep work done, but I thankfully was able to make quick work of it.7 The moon was large and beautiful8, so I started pointing at it. Someone told me that Saturn was apparently visible, so I hesitantly pointed the telescope there next.

Despite the fact that Saturn was partially hidden behind a cloud, I think it was the coolest thing I’ve pointed at this summer. The moon is great, but it mostly just looks like a higher definition image of the moon. Most stars just look like brighter dots on the sky. The occasional double is cool, but it’s just two close by dots. Saturn, on the other hand, had resolvable disks!9

After that, I used my trusty star finding app to point me to a nice double given what part of the sky I could see.10 There was a nice double, and people seemed very11 excited to see it. After that, there were just a few stragglers, so I showed them Polaris12 and then not so subtly suggested that they should go home.

It did not feel like a good talk, but I got tons of compliments afterwards. In retrospect, I was in a really bad head space, and while I don’t think it negatively affected my talk too terribly much, I think it absolutely crushed my idea of how well the talk went. It was my tenth of the season and my I think twelfth overall.13 There are, as it turns out, sixty eight state parks in this state. Given the overlap and the fact that my first talk of the summer wasn’t at a state park14, I have slim hopes of making it to all of them for a talk before I leave graduate school. Still, I can try my hardest I suppose.

The park as a whole was pretty beautiful. It was on one of the nice lakes15, and it had dunes. I didn’t get in until lateish, and so I didn’t want to go swimming.16 I then left early in the morning because I had a fairly packed schedule that day.

Anyways, I had a lovely season of these talks, and I’m grateful for the chance to have done them.17

  1. i wrote a blog about this concept at some point, but I’m not going to look for it now (funnily enough)↩︎

  2. ok so I did use the explicit name of the program. Good to know (re: yesterday’s footnotes↩︎

  3. ok, realistically, there were probably much more than three children, but only three are relevant because they did what children should do↩︎

  4. if sometimes really difficult and philosophical↩︎

  5. yes, and also we move which makes them look like they’re moving, both over the course of a night and over the course of a year and over the course of millennia↩︎

  6. yes? technically the moon isn’t a planet, though I do think (I didn’t say this, of course, correcting children needlessly in their questions is mean) it is large enough to be considered one if it wasn’t, you know, orbiting the earth instead of the sun directly↩︎

  7. shocking how setting up a telescope repeatedly will make you faster at it.↩︎

  8. and incredibly red, which I said was due to dust in the atmosphere, since it was at the horizon. Even if that wasn’t true, it feels emotionally true↩︎

  9. it was absolutely tiny on the scope, but people could still see them. It was wild to me↩︎

  10. we were behind the nature center, and so big dipper (Mizar I want to say is the double in Ursa Major) was invisible. Sadly, that does mean that I was unable to make my dumb bear joke (if you want to know, just ask)↩︎

  11. reasonably↩︎

  12. at their request↩︎

  13. thirteenth? I should check through my notes.↩︎

  14. and it doesn’t show up anywhere in the parks and etc booklet I was given↩︎

  15. some might even call them great↩︎

  16. that’s a lie, of course. I always want to go swimming. I just didn’t want the consequences of swimming, and that was enough to stop me↩︎

  17. as it turns out, the program is so grateful to me that I’ve now been placed on the steering committee. I guess that’s what they say happens. Rewards for a job well done and all↩︎

  18. loosely. There are one sentence descriptions for about half the chapters, so I make sure that i hit every plot point I want to. There are also thirty chapter gaps where I’ll just write where the muse takes me↩︎

  19. because accidentally did at end of day not beginning↩︎

Monthly Reflection

First Published: 2023 September 3

Draft 1

And, like sand through an hourglass, my own hours have passed silently by. Whoops, that’s a little maudlin. Let’s try opening again.

Like the moon which rises and falls each day, waxing and waning over the course of a month, my own month was filled with intermediate highs and lows.1

August, like a summer’s day, felt so long in the moment and yet so short upon reflection.2 I gave my last few3 talks for the summer! I went to a concert!4 I went to a play!

I turned twenty five! I gave my accordion away to be repaired. I competed in a pinball tournament! I went to a friend’s thesis defense!

I wrote a few letters. I swam in a Great Lake!5 I visited my family!

Ok, so in retrospect, I suppose that I did actually do a lot. It still doesn’t feel like it, but as they6 say, c’est la vie.

Let’s see how that list compares with what I said I was excited for.

Looking at last month’s goals:10

Things that I’m excited for this month:13

Using last month’s goals, things I am excited about,18, and my goals for this year of life as inspiration, this month’s goals:19

Given these goals, the questions that I will need to answer each day:

And, as a day in September30, today’s responses:

Oof, that was a bit of a marathon post. Sorry.

  1. still too needlessly poetic, but I suppose it’s good enough. No, on second thought, let’s try a third time.↩︎

  2. Yeah, that’s great.↩︎

  3. final reflection to come!↩︎

  4. which I don’t think that I’ve reviewed. I may or may not.↩︎

  5. and was beside a different one last night↩︎

  6. I, every month, at least once↩︎

  7. to my face at least↩︎

  8. wow!↩︎

  9. for those not in academia, don’t ask. For those in academia, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.↩︎

  10. commentary removed↩︎

  11. so 11 instead of 8. The actual goal was more words, but I did end up another 12 percent less on word count. (it occurs to me that a motivated reader could, in theory, use the word counts and percent decreases I’ve given in my musings to figure out how many words I wrote last month. If you’re the first one to do so and tell me, I’ll get you an ice cream, or something of equivalent value↩︎

  12. read: I recorded a voicemail while driving↩︎

  13. assume that this was written on the first, so I’ll talk about things that have happened since.↩︎

  14. I did it on the first! I think I pr’d↩︎

  15. did that this morning/early afternoon. (it was a long swim time↩︎

  16. I am ninety percent sure I’ve used the program name in this blog before, but if I haven’t, this will not be the first time. I did it, in fact, last night! It went really well. Without (many) spoilers, there were like seventy people again!↩︎

  17. depending on bureaucracy↩︎

  18. which I retroactively added above this sentence↩︎

  19. excluding things I’ve already done↩︎

  20. to say nothing of my mental health.↩︎

  21. taking a nap↩︎

  22. from now on, at least↩︎

  23. which as of now, I have seventy two (I think, off by one errors are quintessential to my experience as a counter) chapters left, and I’m falling behind on the (completely minimal) plot that I’ve meant to write↩︎

  24. which feels like a reasonable number↩︎

  25. since I, you know, didn’t record any last month↩︎

  26. original arrangements of folk songs are maybe allowed. I’m also going to need to decide how I feel about an instrumental song with CGS (Computer generated sound). I think positive, as long as I actually put some effort into mixing, especially since that’s where almost all of the sounds are going to have to come from, since I don’t own/know how to play many of the instruments that I would like to include on the album↩︎

  27. I initially wrote ten, but that’s insane. I’m not going to generate 280 (since it’s the third) things I like about myself. That feels a little too much. 190 seems much more reasonable.↩︎

  28. starting now↩︎

  29. honestly such a fun question because I can really only answer it in the positive↩︎

  30. how is it already -ber months??↩︎

  31. I still have no idea what the right term for this is↩︎

  32. see: camping↩︎

  33. and, importantly, actually follow that plotting, rather than this last chapter where I added fifteen hundred (maybe only a thousand) words about the MC’s family because of a review.↩︎

  34. like straight 8ths, parsimonious voice leading through the chords I’m going to use in the song↩︎

Family Board Games

First Published: 2023 August 30

Draft 1

Last night my family had our first1 board game night. It was a really fun time, for all that it was much shorter than our historic marathon nights. We checked that we were able to play two games,2 and we played through one of them.

Playing Ticket to Ride virtually is a much different experience than playing it live. Thankfully, it is not a game that has significant intrigue, and so the fact that I was playing with the rest of my family from behind a screen didn’t make too much of a difference. It was also really nice to not have to carefully place each of the incredibly small plastic trains on the page. The game layout also makes it incredibly clear how much of the game is left.3

One interesting feature that the game offered is that, like some variations of chess, each player only has so much time to make every choice they will over the course of the game. I chose forty4 five minutes per player, because that was the default for the game, and I didn’t know what changing it would do. I am now curious what would happen if you ran out of time, though. Would it skip your turn? Make you queue your move? I should try it sometime.

  1. virtual↩︎

  2. we were↩︎

  3. for those who’ve never played, Ticket to Ride ends when someone (almost) runs out of trains. In the digital version, there’s a constant tracker of how many trains everyone has.↩︎

  4. it bothers me every time that I write the word that it doesn’t have a u↩︎

Talk Planning, Redux

First Published: 2023 August 29

Draft 1

Last year I gave a talk that was in part about tuning theory. Unsurprisingly, especially given the fact I had been thinking about that talk for years beforehand, I am not entirely happy with the talk that I gave. Mostly, I think that’s because I fell into the same trap that everyone does. Namely: it’s easy to explain how 3 to the n is never equal to 2 to the m1, which means any system is inherently flawed.

As I keep thinking, though, there are other elements I could touch as well. After all, if you only want two notes, you can have a perfectly tuned scale with C and G.2 If you want three notes, then you can even have a well tuned one with C, F, and G.3

The first issue, I suppose, comes between using three and five limit tuning. Now, for those who don’t already know,4 limit tuning refers to the largest prime factor you can have in the denominator or numerator. Going through in order:

Ok how did I get here? Right, how tuning theory is broken for multiple reasons. I think that a five limit diatonic scale should work perfectly, assuming you only want to play in one key. I have an inclination that it would break down even as fast as adding the dominant or subdominant keys.14 Yeah it breaks down immediately.

Ok I know that I’ve done other prep work for the talk, but my notes are all very far away, and getting to them feels like a lot of effort with minimal payoff. Anyways, all this to say, the new talk on tuning theory will go deeper into the math than my last one did, even if I never give it to a single real person.

  1. other than the trivial case of m = n = 0, but come on, we’re adults here↩︎

  2. why I always start my scales on C is beyond me. Probably all the accidents relating to white note keys. Eh, it’s not worth being concerned about I suppose↩︎

  3. I’m not totally sure what a minor 7th is supposed to be, but at least the first three notes are fine.↩︎

  4. read: for those who have spent their life better than me↩︎

  5. ok so actually, there’s a concept for consonance and dissonance where it’s how far the notes are harmonically (I mean duh, but my words aren’t working, hence why I’m doing talk planning). The most consonant interval is obviously the octave (since unison isn’t really an interval), and it has a distance of one. A fifth has a distance of two, as does two octaves. I think that matches my experience well, though I need to find the source paper so I can read it (I think I saw it in a 12tone video at some point). From a quick google, it seems like they might be doing log of the least common multiple of the two notes. In that case, once again, there is no way to make a fifth and octaves be the same harmonic distance. At a first order, though, a fifth (2:3) would be six as LCM, and so lies between two and three octaves in terms of dissonance. Ok enough diversion, back to the actual text↩︎

  6. for this and everything, assume that I still believe in octave equivalence (for all that I’m more and more intellectually willing to not)↩︎

  7. in this case, building from the fourth (fa, or F (hmmmm I wonder if there’s something to the fact that the fourth (f) is fa (f) and the note f (f). eh probably nothing new)↩︎

  8. remember, it’s primes, so four adds nothing new↩︎

  9. because we define a fifth and a fourth to be an octave, and 2 to four is absolutely an octave↩︎

  10. because we define a major and a minor third to be a fifth, and four to six is a fifth↩︎

  11. ok some quick math: 3/2 is G, 3/2 times 3/2 is 9/8 (octave equiv) is D, 3/2 more is 27/16 is A, 81/64 is E. 1.265↩︎

  12. though there are a lot of arguments that the blues and jazz use it, since they use something known as a blue note, which is halfway between a major and minor third, like this is↩︎

  13. 968 cents, according to wikipedia (and no, I will not be getting into what a cent is right now, because I don’t care that much)↩︎

  14. but I should really work out the math. Let’s see, we get A from F and then A from D if we do dominant. A from D would be 27/16, whereas A from F is 4/3 for F and then the fifth is 4 to 5 so 15/8. Nope, 5/3 actually. That makes more sense. 1.6875 is not quite 1.6 repeating, though they are shockingly close. I suppose that playing the two together could work. I also suppose taking the harmonic (i think that’s the right word, the log based one) average of the two could work↩︎

Family Book Club

First Published: 2023 August 28

Draft 1

Apparently I’ve never written about my family’s book club.1 That doesn’t necessarily mean that I haven’t but I can’t find it, so it doesn’t count right now.

So, what is the family book club?2 Well, you need to come with me back to the far off time of 2018?3 My father messaged one of our family group chats4 about a book he thought we should all read.5 I6 then replied that we should have a family book club. The rest of my family agreed, and so we have all taken turns7 choosing a book for us all to read.

Each book club begins with a few standard questions.8

We all give a thumbs up, down, or to the side for whether we enjoyed the book or not. The one who chose the book says why they picked it. We all give our big picture opinions on the book.

Then, because we exclusively read digitally, we go through the ebook that we have all annotated9 and read through each comment and highlight. We usually have pizza while we do our club, though that is not mandatory. Reading through all the comments almost always takes far longer than the pizza does to be consumed, and it often ends in a bit of a drag.

In total, we’ve read twenty five books for book club.10 Ten of them have been what I would classify as self help books, which is kind of fun, I suppose. Since we’ve now gone through 25 in about five years, I suppose we do each really have an average of a single book per person per year, wow. There’s been one non-fiction, and the rest of the books are all fantasy.11

Most recently, we did a marathon of three book clubs back to back to back in a single night. It was really fun, for all that the books were not all universally loved.12 Well, c’est la vie. I’m excited for our next book club, whenever it happens.

  1. based on the search of book-club.html not turning anything up↩︎

  2. technically there’s an opening word, which is our last name (which is, I guess, absolutely obvious if you’re on this site. Nonetheless, I shan’t be explicit about it↩︎

  3. I think↩︎

  4. because we have far too many↩︎

  5. Mindset, for those curious↩︎

  6. I think at least, others may claim that another member of the family said it instead↩︎

  7. going from oldest to youngest↩︎

  8. statements, I suppose↩︎

  9. which makes being the slow reader in the family rewarded, because you get to see everyone else’s takes on the book↩︎

  10. well, we’ve had 25 entries. One of the entries was books 2 through five in a series, and another was six-ten, so I don’t know if that’s really *a* book. One was also two children’s books↩︎

  11. that probably says something about my family, though I’m not sure what↩︎

  12. mine, in particular, was panned↩︎

Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson Review

First Published: 2023 August 24

Draft 1

A few weeks ago now1 I did something that I haven’t done in a while.2 I went to go see a play. The university I attend3 was putting on a production of Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson.

Now, if you’re anything like me, then your first instinct will be to complain that it’s “Ms.” Watson, not “Dr.” Watson.4 I had that complaint going in, especially since the play was described as a feminist retelling.5 I had6 recently subscribed to a SubStack7 called “Letters from Watson,” which just sends out serialized versions of the Sherlock Holmes short stories. It’s really interesting reading them, especially as someone who reads8 a fair amount of modern serialized fiction. The genre conventions have certainly shifted in the intervening years. However, since this post is a review of the show, rather than the fiction, I digress.

When I arrived, the play promised many of the common staples of modern small work plays. It said that there would be forced audience participation9 and that it was a loving but disrespectful10 retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s work. It was fine.

I’m not sure whether I was just hungry and so not as into the play as normal, but the play lacked a lot of flow to me. When I go to a play that I really enjoy, at least for a moment I forget that what I am watching is a play. At no point during the show did I forget that I was sitting in a crowd, watching a performance. I suppose the fourth wall breaks did add to that feeling.11 Still, it was an enjoyable show, and I would happily see it again.

  1. because wow it turns out that one reason I might stop posting is because I become suddenly busy↩︎

  2. though, given the infinite number of potential permutations of activities I can do, that’s not the most meaningful statement.↩︎

  3. which is such an awkward construction↩︎

  4. of course, that’s presupposing a lot about the (allegedly extant) readership of my blog, I suppose↩︎

  5. not to stereotype, but as one might expect by the gender swapping in the title.↩︎

  6. have?↩︎

  7. newsletter app, more or less↩︎

  8. and writes↩︎

  9. though it phrased it differently,↩︎

  10. again, me paraphrasing, I don’t remember the actual verbiage↩︎

  11. this is not the place for me to go into a rant about the way that I dislike modern (popular) media’s tendency (tendencies? media is technically inherently plural) to avoid any sort of genuine emotional appeal by hiding it behind sarcasm and smarm. There will be a place for it sometime soon, but not today↩︎

  12. which is shockingly hard for me to type. I had to erase four four four at least once (and then again when trying to type what my mistake was, I put for in the wrong place as well↩︎

  13. though indeterminate↩︎

  14. two verses, a bridge, and a chorus. It’s probably only like two or three minutes long, but that’s fine.↩︎

25 for Twenty Five

First Published: 2023 August 23

Draft 4: 25 June 24

Last year I tried to do twenty four things between my twenty fourth and twenty fifth birthday. It was a transition away from other, less healthy traditions. I had hoped that setting that goal would have two major effects on my life. First, I had hoped that it would make me more intentional about what I spend my time on. After all, even though I do not know what the number is, I do know that I only have a finite amount of time on this earth. While that has never meant1 maximizing the utility of every single fleeting moment, I do find that I prefer to look back on my time when I have been more intentional with it, rather than less.

The second goal, obviously, was to encourage me to try new things. I don’t know how successful, if at all, that goal was. After all, as I have been told many times by far too many people, I am generally a person who is open to trying new things. That’s certainly something I strive to be, at least. That being said, I was at least more aware of things I had done for the first time, at least in my2 memory.

So, since I enjoyed the challenge, I decided that I’d try it again. n for n is now being rebranded as my attempt to do more new things each passing calendar year. Since there are an infinite number of activities I can try, that should remain doable, especially if I start lowering my standards.

This post also feels like a good place to reflect on the first quarter century of my life. There are arguments to be made that nothing before I have concrete memory should really count, which I have mixed feelings about, and so will ignore. I’ve gotten a Master’s3 Degree, graduated a college with a double major, and earned my Eagle Scout. Those seem like sort of the big three in terms of explicit and externally validated life accomplishments, but there are far more things that I’ve done. I have received five of seven sacraments, which I’m beyond grateful for. I’ve also grown a lot, both physically and mentally. Most importantly, while I don’t think that any age4 of previous me would have foreseen me being where I am right now, I also don’t think any of the past mes would be unhappy with it. I am grateful for the time I have had and look forward to the time to come. My fingers are crossed that I will get more than another quarter century on this earth, and I hope to use it well. Maudlin musing aside, there are some things that I want to do in this year. I think that updates for this post will be coming in two forms: things that I have done, and things that I want to do. There were things I wanted to do last year that I kept forgetting about, and so never did.5 With that in mind: Things that I want to do before my quarter century year is gone:

Huh, I hadn’t realized some of the things I wanted to do. I don’t know if I’ve ever articulated, to myself, at least, a desire to record an album. Apparently all those people who say that giving yourself space is good are true. Anyways, I have also done new things since turning twenty five!

Well, even though I stopped blogging for seven months, I kept up with the novelty. I’m at 22 now33, and even if some are overlapping, they still feel novel right now. If I accomplish the four goals I have remaining that I still want34, I’ll be over and can condense! Hooray!

Draft 3: 27 November 23

Last year I tried to do twenty four things between my twenty fourth and twenty fifth birthday. It was a transition away from other, less healthy traditions. I had hoped that setting that goal would have two major effects on my life. First, I had hoped that it would make me more intentional about what I spend my time on. After all, even though I do not know what the number is, I do know that I only have a finite amount of time on this earth. While that has never meant35 maximizing the utility of every single fleeting moment, I do find that I prefer to look back on my time when I have been more intentional with it, rather than less.

The second goal, obviously, was to encourage me to try new things. I don’t know how successful, if at all, that goal was. After all, as I have been told many times by far too many people, I am generally a person who is open to trying new things. That’s certainly something I strive to be, at least. That being said, I was at least more aware of things I had done for the first time, at least in my36 memory.

So, since I enjoyed the challenge, I decided that I’d try it again. n for n is now being rebranded as my attempt to do more new things each passing calendar year. Since there are an infinite number of activities I can try, that should remain doable, especially if I start lowering my standards.

This post also feels like a good place to reflect on the first quarter century of my life. There are arguments to be made that nothing before I have concrete memory should really count, which I have mixed feelings about, and so will ignore. I’ve gotten a Master’s37 Degree, graduated a college with a double major, and earned my Eagle Scout. Those seem like sort of the big three in terms of explicit and externally validated life accomplishments, but there are far more things that I’ve done. I have received five of seven sacraments, which I’m beyond grateful for. I’ve also grown a lot, both physically and mentally. Most importantly, while I don’t think that any age38 of previous me would have foreseen me being where I am right now, I also don’t think any of the past mes would be unhappy with it. I am grateful for the time I have had and look forward to the time to come. My fingers are crossed that I will get more than another quarter century on this earth, and I hope to use it well. Maudlin musing aside, there are some things that I want to do in this year. I think that updates for this post will be coming in two forms: things that I have done, and things that I want to do. There were things I wanted to do last year that I kept forgetting about, and so never did.39 With that in mind: Things that I want to do before my quarter century year is gone:

Huh, I hadn’t realized some of the things I wanted to do. I don’t know if I’ve ever articulated, to myself, at least, a desire to record an album. Apparently all those people who say that giving yourself space is good are true. Anyways, I have also done new things since turning twenty five!

Welp, it’s been about four months, and I’ve gotten through about eight events, so I’m more or less at pace. I’m slightly behind, but I don’t know if that’s really an issue. After all, at worst I can just do more next summer in the days before my next birthday.

Draft 2: 13 September 2023

Whoops! The first draft of this posting didn’t have proper formatting.52 So, in addition to adding things, I’m going to have the second draft actually be, you know, formatted. Also, I’m going to delete some of the text, since it’s really rambly.

last year I tried to do twenty four things between my twenty fourth and twenty fifth birthday. I had hoped that setting that goal would have two major effects on my life. First, I had hoped that it would make me more intentional about what I spend my time on. After all, even though I do not know what the number is, I do know that I only have a finite amount of time on this earth. While that has never meant53 maximizing the utility of every single fleeting moment, I do find that I prefer to look back on my time when I have been more intentional with it, rather than less.

The second goal, obviously, was to encourage me to try new things. I don’t know how successful, if at all, that goal was. After all, as I have been told many times by far too many people, I am generally a person who is open to trying new things. That’s certainly something I strive to be, at least. That being said, I was at least more aware of things I had done for the first time, at least in my54 memory.

So, since I enjoyed the challenge, I decided that I’d try it again. n for n is now being rebranded as my attempt to do more new things each passing calendar year. Since there are an infinite number of activities I can try, that should remain doable, especially if I start lowering my standards.

This post also feels like a good place to reflect on the first quarter century of my life. There are arguments to be made that nothing before I have concrete memory should really count, which I have mixed feelings about, and so will ignore. I’ve gotten a Master’s55 Degree, graduated a college with a double major, and earned my Eagle Scout. Those seem like sort of the big three in terms of explicit and externally validated life accomplishments, but there are far more things that I’ve done. I have received five of seven sacraments, which I’m beyond grateful for. I’ve also grown a lot, both physically and mentally. Most importantly, while I don’t think that any age56 of previous me would have foreseen me being where I am right now, I also don’t think any of the past mes would be unhappy with it. I am grateful for the time I have had and look forward to the time to come. My fingers are crossed that I will get more than another quarter century on this earth, and I hope to use it well. Maudlin musing aside, there are some things that I want to do in this year. I think that updates for this post will be coming in two forms: things that I have done, and things that I want to do. There were things I wanted to do last year that I kept forgetting about, and so never did.57 With that in mind: Things that I want to do before my quarter century year is gone:

Huh, I hadn’t realized some of the things I wanted to do. I don’t know if I’ve ever articulated, to myself, at least, a desire to record an album. Apparently all those people who say that giving yourself space is good are true. Anyways, I have also done new things since turning twenty five!

That puts me at a full fifth of the needed new activities, which is nice, especially since I haven’t gone through a full new month. Anyways, I hope to keep both of these lists updated, and hopefully I’ll be able to start moving things from the want to do list to the have done list. I have an awesome set of amazing friends, and I’m beyond grateful that they also do many fantastic things. Relevant to this post, one friend wants to do a good number of the things I want to do as well, which will be nice.

Since this posting is happening the same day that I’m also writing a full blog post, I’ll do my daily reflection there instead.

Draft 1

last year I tried to do twenty four things between my twenty fourth and twenty fifth birthday. I had hoped that setting that goal would have two major effects on my life. First, I had hoped that it would make me more intentional about what I spend my time on. After all, even though I do not know what the number is, I do know that I only have a finite amount of time on this earth. While that has never meant65 maximizing the utility of every single fleeting moment, I do find that I prefer to look back on my time when I have been more intentional with it, rather than less. ?The second goal, obviously, was to encourage me to try new things. I don’t know how successful, if at all, that goal was. After all, as I have been told many times by far too many people, I am generally a person who is open to trying new things. That’s certainly something I strive to be, at least. That being said, I was at least more aware of things I had done for the first time, at least in my66 memory. ?So, since I enjoyed the challenge, I decided that I’d try it again. n for n is now being rebranded as my attempt to do more new things each passing calendar year. Since there are an infinite number of activities I can try, that should remain doable, especially if I start lowering my standards. ?This post also feels like a good place to reflect on the first quarter century of my life. There are arguments to be made that nothing before I have concrete memory should really count, which I have mixed feelings about, and so will ignore. I’ve gotten a Master’s67 Degree, graduated a college with a double major, and earned my Eagle Scout. Those seem like sort of the big three in terms of explicit and externally validated life accomplishments, but there are far more things that I’ve done. I have received five of seven sacraments, which I’m beyond grateful for. ? I’ve also grown a lot, both physically and mentally. Most importantly, while I don’t think that any age68 of previous me would have foreseen me being where I am right now, I also don’t think any of the past mes would be unhappy with it. I am grateful for the time I have had and look forward to the time to come. My fingers are crossed that I will get more than another quarter century on this earth, and I hope to use it well. ? Maudlin musing aside, there are some things that I want to do in this year. I think that updates for this post will be coming in two forms: things that I have done, and things that I want to do. There were things I wanted to do last year that I kept forgetting about, and so never did.69 With that in mind: ? Things that I want to do before my quarter century year is gone:?

Huh, I hadn’t realized some of the things I wanted to do. I don’t know if I’ve ever articulated, to myself, at least, a desire to record an album. Apparently all those people who say that giving yourself space is good are true. Anyways, I have also done new things since turning twenty five! ?

? Anyways, I hope to keep both of these lists updated, and hopefully I’ll be able to start moving things from the want to do list to the have done list. I have an awesome set of amazing friends, and I’m beyond grateful that they also do many fantastic things. Relevant to this post, one friend wants to do a good number of the things I want to do as well, which will be nice. ? Since this is going to be a constantly updated draft, it feels a little strange to do my daily reflection in it, but c’est la vie.75 ?

? Oh fun! I posted this a year and a day later!

  1. for me at least↩︎

  2. admittedly spotty↩︎

  3. I can never remember if that’s a possessive or not↩︎

  4. excluding the past year or so of my life↩︎

  5. chief among them: taking an improv class↩︎

  6. which may not be different? I’m only half remembering words anymore↩︎

  7. since I’m sure some of the pieces I put out will be instrumental↩︎

  8. and won my section no less!↩︎

  9. it was absolutely beautiful↩︎

  10. added 11/27↩︎

  11. well, participated in one. I think I’ve technically attended one as a spectator before↩︎

  12. added 11/27↩︎

  13. added 11/27↩︎

  14. added 11/27. Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll just be able to say I learned↩︎

  15. creative. I’m only counting blog post, Jeb and NaNo I think↩︎

  16. 7219 currently. May be higher later. Added 11/27↩︎

  17. added 11/27↩︎

  18. added 6/25, don’t ask↩︎

  19. added 6/25↩︎

  20. maybe, I don’t know if it was the first time I actually learned the rules↩︎

  21. added 6/25↩︎

  22. added 6/25↩︎

  23. added 6/25↩︎

  24. added 6/25↩︎

  25. added 6/25↩︎

  26. 1,329,218 as of updating this on 6/25↩︎

  27. added 6/25↩︎

  28. it was so fun honestly. added 6/25↩︎

  29. added 6/25↩︎

  30. added 6/25↩︎

  31. added 6/25↩︎

  32. added 6/25. Have to add the caveat of skipped work because I have, in fact, seen an eclipse before↩︎

  33. having removed the 23nd because it feels too private↩︎

  34. sorry improv↩︎

  35. for me at least↩︎

  36. admittedly spotty↩︎

  37. I can never remember if that’s a possessive or not↩︎

  38. excluding the past year or so of my life↩︎

  39. chief among them: taking an improv class↩︎

  40. which may not be different? I’m only half remembering words anymore↩︎

  41. since I’m sure some of the pieces I put out will be instrumental↩︎

  42. and won my section no less!↩︎

  43. it was absolutely beautiful↩︎

  44. added 11/27↩︎

  45. well, participated in one. I think I’ve technically attended one as a spectator before↩︎

  46. added 11/27↩︎

  47. added 11/27↩︎

  48. added 11/27. Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll just be able to say I learned↩︎

  49. creative. I’m only counting blog post, Jeb and NaNo I think↩︎

  50. 7219 currently. May be higher later. Added 11/27↩︎

  51. added 11/27↩︎

  52. I had just switched to a new editor that apparently uses non UTF-8 line breaks. Don’t ask me why↩︎

  53. for me at least↩︎

  54. admittedly spotty↩︎

  55. I can never remember if that’s a possessive or not↩︎

  56. excluding the past year or so of my life↩︎

  57. chief among them: taking an improv class↩︎

  58. which may not be different? I’m only half remembering words anymore↩︎

  59. since I’m sure some of the pieces I put out will be instrumental↩︎

  60. hmm back into may be wrong.↩︎

  61. and won my section no less!↩︎

  62. it was absolutely beautiful↩︎

  63. added 13 September, I sat around for twenty or so minutes until the judge came in and told us that they had settled.↩︎

  64. ok so like it was hosted by a friend and there were no stakes, but I’m still counting it, may be willing to remove if more exciting things happen to me. Added 13 September↩︎

  65. for me at least↩︎

  66. admittedly spotty↩︎

  67. I can never remember if that’s a possessive or not↩︎

  68. excluding the past year or so of my life↩︎

  69. chief among them: taking an improv class↩︎

  70. which may not be different? I’m only half remembering words anymore↩︎

  71. since I’m sure some of the pieces I put out will be instrumental↩︎

  72. hmm back into may be wrong.↩︎

  73. and won my section no less!↩︎

  74. it was absolutely beautiful↩︎

  75. the only french phrase my family uses.↩︎

  76. for all that this musing felt a whole lot like a journal↩︎

Pinball Part One

First Published: 2023 August 22

Draft 1

Last Wednesday I competed in my first ever pinball tournament. I had no clue what it would be like going into it, which may not have been my best choice ever. Nonetheless, I knew a few important facts. ?

As I told my friends going into it, my only real goal in the competition was making it past group play. As it turns out, that was a needlessly pessimistic goal. Everyone makes it into the finals, though not in the same bracket. ? I suppose I should explain the format of the competition. After signups, everyone is2 randomly assigned to a group of four.3 Each group plays seven of the eight machines at the bar4, and they record their scores at the end of each three ball set.5 They had a few extra rules, like that you weren’t allowed to play extra balls, which makes complete sense to me in retrospect. While it would not have made a huge difference for me, there were people whose every ball lasted at least five minutes. ? In my group of four, there was me,6 the person who ended up winning the entire competition that night, the girlfriend of the brewery’s rep7, and a fourth person about as good as I was. Once group play ended, we all turned our slips of paper in to someone, who then ranked us best to worst. One rankings were done, I found out how finals work. When I had signed up, the organizer told me that they make sure it’s not just the absolute best players who get a prize, because that would discourage less good players from attending. ? So, we are all ranked from best to worst. The best four players go to a machine and play single elimination games until there is one person left.8 Now, you may be wondering how they pick which machine they go on. The top seed in each set gets to choose their machine.9 I was the top seed of the fourth bracket10, which was where they started putting us in groups of three.11 I chose Godzilla, because it was the most fun machine. At that point, I was incredibly nervous. One of the other people on my machine was the fourth player in my qualifier, who was notably better than me at the Godzilla machine. ?But, I managed to squeak out a win twice, and that meant that I got a prize.?I ended up taking home a four pack of craft beer.12?I also took home a tshirt and some stickers, which was nice. I also learned while there that the brewery buys your first13 beer of the night. ?It was really fun, for all that it lasted much longer than I expected it to. I had really thought that the entire event would be over in two or three hours.?Instead, it took four, and that was apparently a quick tournament as far as their timings go.?I’ll probably do it again, though I’ll make sure to eat dinner first and know that I’ll be late rising the next day. ?

Once again, sorry for the rambling nature of the posting. That’s what the site encourages.? ?

  1. I’m never giving up this construction, even though it makes me sound so much like the person who studied abroad in London (which, to be fair, I am↩︎

  2. allegedly, though I think they intentionally try to get a diversity of levels↩︎

  3. or three, I think there were a couple of those because there weren’t enough people competing that night.↩︎

  4. going left to right, so you don’t play the machine to your left when you begin↩︎

  5. the number of people I know who didn’t know that pinball is played with three balls astounds me↩︎

  6. obviously↩︎

  7. one of the people who didn’t know about the number of balls you get↩︎

  8. so at the end of everyone’s three balls, last place is eliminated↩︎

  9. though the top seeds aren’t allowed on the Godzilla machine, because it takes far longer than the other machines, especially at high level of play (for instance, the person in my group had two different multiballs active at once.↩︎

  10. thirteenth place↩︎

  11. because we did not have a modulo four number of players, I assume↩︎

  12. I think I chose a sour initially, but then traded away a few individuals to other people who took a four pack so we could try multiple flavors or something.↩︎

  13. read: my only, since it was a Wednesday↩︎

  14. eight non rhyming lines, I think↩︎

  15. four rhyming lines↩︎

  16. hips because I noticed they’ve been strangely tight recently and shoulders because I swam.↩︎

  17. long course, no less↩︎

Universe in the Park Part 4

First Published: 2023 August 21

Draft 1

It’s been a fair minute since the last time that I wrote this blog.?Sorry for that!?Hopefully future delays will happen with far less frequency and length. So, since my last posting, I’ve actually gone on more than one UitP. I’ve given five over the course of three events. They’ve all been incredible, though each in their own way. ?The first one I gave since accidentally giving up was at what I have to assume is the most popular state park in the state. It was scheduled for a Tuesday, and I even still had more than twenty people show up. Apparently in an average year, they get more than three million visitors, which is wild to me. ?The viewing of stars from that talk wasn’t the best I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, the place they recommended I set up was somewhat obscured by trees and the surrounding cliff. That isn’t too much of an issue, though, because historically most of the stars and other celestial bodies I care about seeing are in the upper portion of the sky anyways. It was also beside one of the shelters, which remains lit apparently all night long. That made it a little bit harder to see the stars. A number of my friends made it up to the talk, which was really nice!? After that, I had a brief few days off. That Friday and Saturday, though, I drove up to the northern part of the state. While there, I made a quick detour to drop off my accordion at the1 accordion repair school. They had a museum, which I’ll hopefully find the time to blog about in the future. The talks were hosted by a pair of sister parks, and so they asked me to prepare multiple different presentations. Despite the fact that I’ve been assured each instance of my usual talk is different, I still made a new slide deck.2 Since my talks were scheduled during the peak of the Perseid3 meteor shower, I made the new slide deck about that.4 Both nights, unfortunately, we were rained out from observing. Even more unfortunately, both nights the rain was completely unforeseen5. The second talk proceeded much like the first, though with far more questions.? There was a camp of high schoolers who were very interested in black holes. As it turns out, one of the counselors for that camp is a rising student in the Astronomy PhD program at my university. It was great to meet him. A whole week went by without doing anything with the talks, since I planned to reuse my slides again this past weekend. At the end of the week, I drove just about as far north, though slightly further east this time, to give another two talks. Both nights had perfectly clear skies, which was fantastic. On the first night, my audience was primarily older people, members of the friends of the state park, which was cool. It was also by far the best prepared audience I’ve ever had. When I asked my standard starting question of “who has heard the term astrochemistry before?” most of them actually raised their hands. That was a surprise, but did mean that I had a number of great questions. After that, we looked at Mizar,6 which I’m going to more and more use as a staple star. It’s really cool that it’s a double star.7 When that talk ended, I went to sleep and woke up, excited for my second talk of the weekend. I took a leisurely drive up another hour north, stopping at a coffee shop, a few bakeries, and a farmer’s market. I also got to8 take a ferry up to the island my next talk was on. It was apparently not advertised at all until five or so minutes before the talk began. Despite that, there were around thirty people at my talk, which is still great. ?Since I made it to the island plenty early, I had time to go swim in another Great Lake.?That was really fun and cool,9 and the water was so clear. It was a really fun trip, for all that the seven hour drive the next day was less than my favorite thing to have ever done. ?I think that I only have one more of these talks scheduled for the summer, which is really weird. It both feels like too many and too few. I do regret not blogging at all during the five talks, but life got in the way.10 I’m also sorry if this post is far more verbose and rambly than normal. I’m trying out a new word processor, and it encourages high word counts.

918/130

  1. as far as I can tell, only,↩︎

  2. I’d call it a powerpoint, but I’m producing PDFs in LaTeX, which I then present in a PDF viewer, so powerpoint feels fully wrong to use as a descriptor↩︎

  3. I think that’s how it’s spelled↩︎

  4. I suppose that I’ve blogged about it in the past, so that should not be a surprise.↩︎

  5. unforecasted?↩︎

  6. a double star in the big dipper↩︎

  7. two stars that are visually very close together on the sky.↩︎

  8. was required to? I suppose there wasn’t another real option in terms of making the voyage↩︎

  9. almost icy, in fact↩︎

  10. primarily, I went to a concert and a birthday party on the fifth, celebrated on the sixth, and did not have access to my main computer from the ninth through the seventeenth.↩︎

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