I tried the nocino a while back. It's still pretty harsh, but the flavor's interesting. Time and sunlight have destroyed a lot of the initial industrial-solvent-walnut-fruitiness. It's been filtered and bottled now, and it's getting daily sun. I'll try some again in a few months.

I found a walnut tree back in early July. It's on my walking route between home and the lab. I'm not all that familiar with walnuts, but they're pretty close to pecans so I'm surprised it took me this long to recognize it ( Read more... )

The closest thing to Lovecraftian, noneuclidian horror that I've encountered in daily life is katsuoboshi on my okonomiyaki.

So it's been about a year since I had an internet connection at home. My monthly internet died for about the 10th time, and I'd gotten fed up with my ISP's tech support. After that I just stopped paying, and the connection stayed down. I submit my taxes online so I recently got reconnected. Now I get to catch up on lj, youtube, facebook, and ( Read more... )

You know you live in a bizarre world when you see that many people spend their free moments filling in the multiplication tables to weirdly-constrained, order-9 quasigroups all the while claiming that the task requires "no math".

Whenever I run across the name "Prufrock" I always imagine math rock taken to its logical conclusion (hardy har har). Maybe the songs would give the listener an intuitive grasp of ring theory or Fourier series analysis. Then when you hit that stuff for the first time in class, you're all, "It's trivial! TRIVIAL!!!" But, don't let anyone else in ( Read more... )

Remember those papers I submitted awhile back? Well, both got accepted: one to Bioinformatics and one to Computational Biology and Chemistry. So now I'm feeling pretty good about the upcoming prelim. That's the last major hurdle before defending, and it's supposedly much easier when you've got outside verification that your work is science- ( Read more... )

I'm sitting in on this Biological Physics class. It started last weeek. Today, the prof, who's pretty well known for single molecule fluorescence work, drew a big, logarithmic length scale on the board, which spanned the whole front wall of the classroom. That room is actually pretty uncomfortable but par for the course in Physics departments, I ( Read more... )

The Pirate
58% aliveness, 23% benevolence, 26% intellectualism You are the Pirate! Yo ho ho, a freebooting life of wild adventure, never a care in the world. Plunder a galleon loaded with treasure, and zip away before the lumbering barges of the navy even know you're there. By evening your stolen booty will have you up to your neck in rum, ( Read more... )

I'm back from the land of trifle, bread pudding, crackers, silly paper crowns, and bubble and squeak. Visited with the family. Time disappears rapidly around my parents. Days will go by without much of anything happening besides talking and eating. They have this slow, country-style life, and I can dig that. It seems like people are trying to ( Read more... )