Below are the most recent 3 friends' journal entries.

Monday, December 14th, 2009
skypoint	4:57p	Research Culture The research culture is strange. I am sort of surprised that more scientists do not go crazy or 'postal' or whatever the modern buzzword is. People tell you that you should publish, publish, publish. They set guidelines for the number of publications you should have in a year. They encourage you to meet these guidelines by basing performance reviews and promotions on the number of publications you have. It is clear that publishing your work is important to the research culture. On the other hand, when you do try to publish, there are lots of procedures to follow. For example, I need to provide at least 8 weeks notice before shipping my publication off to a conference. This will allow all of the proper people to review the paper, sign the forms, etc. The funny part is that nobody wants to pay for you to go to a conference. It's just not worth it, because all the projects care about is getting the work done. So on one hand you have someone telling you that your career is going to die if you do not publish, but on the other hand you have people telling you that they will not pay for you to publish. Okay. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
skypoint	10:22p	Music @ Home It's been a while since I blogged about anything other than the home-buying experience. This blog tends to represent whatever has captured my attention at the time, and buying a house is one of those things. Every time I try to think of something other than buying a home, someone wants my signature or my checking account mysteriously is drained again. Such is life! One thing that does interest me is coming up with a design for a home music room. I think I have blogged about my interest in electronic music, along with all of the bass and un-natural frequency ranges that are entailed. Presumably, the person creating this music has some sort of keyboard that does a decent job of making the correct sounds at the correct time. More and more this is being replaced by a MIDI keyboard (which sends the correct control codes and the correct time) and a 'soft synthesizer' which is really just a computer program that makes the sounds. People realized that it was too hard to program all of these sounds into a keyboard, so it's easier to just let a computer do it and use the keyboard to control the computer. One thing I really want to do in the new house is make a music room, where I can have keyboards or guitars plugged into a nice-sounding stereo system with a clear sound and a good bass response. The challenge in creating this setup is that it kind of bridges two worlds. On one hand, you have the musical instrument performance world. This world consists of keyboards/computers that are run into pre-amps and connected to amplifiers that power big speakers with huge range. This world likes to operate using 1/4" plug connectors. On the other hand, you have the home stereo world which has a lot of equipment sending very low voltage levels into a receiver, which is then connected to about 4 speakers. On a third hand (for those special people among us), you have the car stereo world which uses powerful sub amplifiers and 12" subwoofers that run on a 12-volt DC input. These worlds don't seem to interact a lot. I've been trying to figure out ways of getting some musical performance gear hooked up to a home stereo. There are some issues getting the impedance and power output matched, but largely it seems like this just involves adapting the 1/4" plug to the RCA connector. What makes me nervous is that I have found very few people who tried connecting keyboards to home stereos. Maybe they just use performance amplifiers/speakers to do that, I dunno. That solution does not make much sense to me for home use. The good news is that this house should use up enough money to give me tons of time to think about these things without ever spending a dime... (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
skypoint	8:46p	Buying a House, One Paper at a Time It seems like when you want to do a relatively simple thing like buy a house, there is always a lot of paper. It is quite comparable to doing other simple things, like applying for a job or completing a FAFSA. You end up answering a lot of questions and writing down a lot of numbers that don't really matter anyway because they are nobody's business. What difference does it make if my W2s are not real? As long as I still pay the mortgage amount, I don't see why it should matter if I have a job. The bank does not feel the same way, I guess. The only good thing about all of this paperwork is that every now and then you find some interesting loophole that once had a purpose but has become obsolete in society. For example, I can make my down payment in cash. I've always wanted to march into a bank with 1000 twenty-dollar bills and say "Trust me!". Of course, the only people who do that on a regular basis are the ones who sell drugs. I hear there is a lot of paperwork involved in that, too. (Comment on this)