ChapterZero

I’m very disorganized in all aspects of my life, and this can be seen by looking at my financial situation. I have three bank accounts, or things resembling them: a savings account at Chase, a checking account at WAMU, and a “CougarOne Card” account with my school. The latter is the one I use most often, because I can use my OneCard as a MasterCard, even though it is really a debit card. But, I opted out on the direct deposit option when I get paid by the university, because I’d like to be able to spread my money out over all three accounts, and I still haven’t figured out a way to withdraw cash from my OneCard account.

For various reasons, I have about $200 in my Chase account, $20 in my OneCard, and $15 in WAMU. Actually, I might have $-18 on my OneCard– I made a purchase at thinkgeek, and it’s showing up in a very confusing way. Point is, I’m broke. And I keep spending money. Thankfully, today I should get paid… assuming they don’t do like last time and pay me a month late! Then I’ll work out exactly how I’m going to spread that money around.

If you’re wondering, I’m mentioning all this because I just donated to movabletype so I could get an update key, and the process got me thinking.

I just rediscovered the MIT Open Courseware site, and am adding it to my list of quick links at the top of the site. And I’m also adding the Dive into Accessibility website, because I plan on making sure my site is accessible. The more I’m exposed to the idea of accessibility, the more guilty I feel for being such a lazy bum of a designer.

Taken from the comments section of a post at Kuro5hin.

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When people try to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them:

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev.1:9).The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7.In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness (Lev.15:19-24).The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev.25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev.11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev.11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread cotton/polyester blend. He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev.24:10-16)? Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

—snip—

We interrupt this regularly scheduled nothing to bring you a new posting:

Have you ever heard someone mention off-handedly that 2π periodic functions can also be viewed as functions defined on the circle, and wondered what in the world… is so obvious about that fact, that they don’t bother to explain themselves… and wondered if that meant you were missing the obvious?

Well, the answer is yes. You were missing the obvious: let x be the angle subtended in the circle, then if f is a 2π periodic function, f(x) represents the function at the location x on the circumference of the circle. Isn’t that neat?

That raises some other ideas in my mind, probably not amounting to anything, but I’ll mention them anyway. What about q-π periodic functions, where q is a real number? It seems like you could do the same thing, and then define an isomorphism between q-π periodic functions and 2-π periodic functions. Actually, that’s obvious even without the circle idea: just use the same abscissa scaling that we use to give trig functions arbitrary periods.

Question: why do we use complex exponentials (and by extension, trig polynomials) as the orthonormal set for determining Fourier series. Other than the historical reasons, ease of determining the general coefficients (you only have to do two or three integrals, at most), and the relatively straight forward physical interpretation it lends itself to? I can’t think of any other closed orthogonal set offhand that it wouldn’t be a pain to orthonomalize, and even more of a pain to determine *all* the Fourier coefficients with respect to for a given function… but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

For the past two days, I have been frantically attempting to get my poster printed, which I need to take with me to the SACNAS conference in Alberquerque, when I leave on Thursday. I completed it on Monday morning, and brought it to school for the Creation Station (UH’s printing shop) to print it. But I had lost my flash drive at school earlier, so I had to resort to splitting it up onto two floppies. And floppies, being floppies, exhibit the strange tendency to give you errors when you need them to work most. So, I shelled out the cash for another flash drive, and managed to bring the file to school today, uncorrupted. The manager(?) of the Creation Station was kind enough to try to print it for me in less than 24 hrs (their policy is at least 24 hrs ahead of time). But then, they called me out of class for a font problem. Even though I had subset 100% of the font I was using into the AI file, it was substituting out my font on their computers, making the poster illegible and ugly. So, I went down there, and switched the fonts out manually to something that is passable. Is the saga over yet… I don’t know.

The lesson I learned in all this is, like the manager said, *convert to outlines*!. Or at least, if you subset, subset 100% and provide the font file along with the illustration file. I suppose doing both wouldn’t hurt.

I also got to listen to her talking about how she got started in the business, sort of, while I was fixing up the poster. Now I’m considering taking a few courses ( certification, not college!) on that kind of stuff. The idea of owning my own print shop is intriguing me also, but I don’t know that I’ll be able to fit that in with the rest of my life.