Monday, September 23, 2024
Midna Memorial
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Our Cats
We are currently living with five felines that have domesticated us. In addition, we are fostering three kittens until August 7th. Since Yeongmi and I married we've had two other cats that are no longer with us. We've also fostered eight cats (counting the kittens), all since we moved back to Utah in September of 2023.
Teddy, Moki, and Midna 2024 |
Monday, December 18, 2023
A Roman Denarius
Thursday, August 17, 2023
About Sleep
I will be posting interesting articles and videos about sleep here. I have coauthored two academic papers on the intersection of sleep and economic choice, which is why I find this subject so interesting.
- “A Model of Sleep in Two Mammalian Species: Interacting Circadian and Homeostatic Processes with Opportunity Cost,” (joint with James Cardon, Eric Eide, and Mark Showalter), PLOS ONE, vol. 13 no. 12 (2018).
- "A Model of Sleep, Leisure and Work over the Business Cycle," (joint with James Cardon, Eric Eide, and Mark Showalter), Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, vol. 95 (2018) pp. 19-36.
Interesting Science
I'll be posting links to interesting articles and videos I find related to science and engineering.
Here is the first one Aug. 17, 2023:
Monday, October 17, 2022
You Need to Know about the Hundredth Meridian
The Hundredth Meridian was identified by John Wesley Powell (a fascinating character in his own right) as a geographic tipping point separating the wet Eastern US from the dry West. This has all sorts of implications for ecology and social structure. Here is a fascinating YouTube video on the subject.
Basically, the dry West is due to the rain shadow from the Rocky Mountains (very broadly defined). East of the 100th meridian, the land was wet and dominated by forests that were not dissimilar to those with which most European immigrants were familiar. To the west of this line the land was dominated by grasslands and desert, to which the settlement patterns adopted in the East were not well suited.
"At the Hundredth Meridian" is also a great song by The Tragically Hip.
Domesticated Foxes
The 점심 - Dim Sum Connection
Friday, July 8, 2022
Artistic Styles in Craiyon / DALL-E mini
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Monday, July 4, 2022
You Think You Have Translation Problems?
Saturday, July 2, 2022
Computer Case Mod for "Gondor"
I assembled my first custom-made desktop computer several years ago when I was still living in Utah. My youngest son, Alan, had actually put it together a year or two before that, but he was upgrading and I wanted something better than the MacBook BYU had issued me as a work computer.
Friday, July 1, 2022
Monday, June 27, 2022
Imagining Feelings with DALL-E Mini
DALL-E mini is a app that converts text into images. It's based on a larger neural net called (not surprisingly) DALL-E. The main public usage of DALL-E mini seems to be the generating of silly memes like those linked in this article.
One really interesting use, however, is to see the kind of images it generates when you type in feelings and emotions that are rarely associated with a specific image. The images above are from "existential angst."
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Building Westmarch, my Home NAS
A couple of months ago my main desk top computer, which I built two years ago at the begining of the COVID pandemic quit working. Diagnosing the problem took me down a real rabbit-hole of possible parts problems and I ended up with some extra working parts at the end of that journey. (The problem turned out to be a bad HDD.) As a result I decided to see if I could cobble together a working home NAS.
Friday, June 24, 2022
There's something about ...rungus!
Not long ago a comedian named Guy Kelly typed in the nonsense name, Crungus, into DALL-E mini and got the horrifying result above. DALL-E mini is a app that converts text into images. It's based on a larger neural net called (not surprisingly) DALL-E.
What is a Mergopus?
Is this a mergopus? |
What exactly is a mergopus? Try searching on your favorite internet search engine and you will find no information on the word. This is because it is a nonsense word I made up a few days ago.
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Family Cars
Ford F-Series Pickup 1st Generation owned by Russell and LaVon Phillips |
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Cleaning Old Slides
I have spent the past several months scanning old slides that were taken by my father and grandfather. Some of the loose older slides were very dirty and smudged. I originally scanned these "as is", but after some reading online decided to try cleaning them up. I used a spray bottle with 99.5% pure alcohol and some microfiber cloths. The images below show the before and after photos.
Repairing a Colt 1861 Navy Revolver
Thursday, March 4, 2021
Two Methods of Converting 8mm Film to Digital
A couple of decades ago I got a copy of some of my grandfather's old 8mm home movies he filmed in the 1960s. These films were played on an 8mm film projecter onto a screen and recorded again using a VHS camcorder. I got a copy of this tape. About a decade ago, I digitalized all my VHS tapes using a VHD to DVD converter deck. This included the tape with my grandfather's movies. Then a few years later, I converted the DVD files to mp4 format to share with family more easily.