Rate this:

This is an insanely quick post that has two purposes:
Firstly, to apologize for not posting anything lately. There *have* been a lot of exciting things going on lately, but I have also been quite busy.
Secondly, the most exciting thing that happened within the last 24 hours is SNOW!

Last night, against my doubts, it started snowing. I knew this because I heard a very loud commotion coming from outside my dorm room. It was Sunday night — usually be the time for we college students to stay in their rooms and consider starting on the homework we haven’t done all weekend. But instead, people were shouting. Several vuvuzelas blared out in the night. I even heard the strains of someone who thought they could play the guitar.

Without even looking outside, I instinctively knew the cause of all the commotion: it had to be snow.

Hastily, I kidnapped one of my friends, put on my jacket, and went outside to bask in the glorious wonder of this nighttime gift.

But of course, whenever something awesome happens, there’s always at least one person around to ruin everything…from out of the celebrations and festive street noises, there came an obnoxious voice:

“Shut up, guys! It’s just snow!”

Just snow? I thought. Not so!

It’s not just any snow, but the first snow of the year! How could we not be excited? Luckily, everyone agreed, and there came loud roars telling the lone dissenter to go to hell, (or worse, UNC). The festivities resumed.

The Cynic from last night stayed in my mind for a while, though. I felt sorry for him actually. For all I know, he could be leading the most fulfilled life out of all of us; but still, I can’t help but feel bad. I, for one, hope that I never grow up to the point where I can’t get excited over the first snow of the year.

…Unfortunately, the snow had all but vanished by this morning (we are in Raleigh, after all)

Ah, well. It was a nice night.

 

Rate this:

For those of you who live in Raleigh, (and especially those of you who go to NCSU), I highly recommend you take a visit to see the Gregg Museum. It’s a fairly small museum as far as museums go, but the university keeps a ton of items in storage. The exhibits currently on display are only a fraction of that number.

I visited the museum recently. I was only allowed to take pictures of the exhibits that NCSU owns, which is only half of the items currently on display. I’m only posting pictures of half of that half, so if you’re in Raleigh and decide to plan a visit, you’ll still have the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

*If you can’t see the slideshow above, try this gallery:

Rate this:

Being at a campus as large as N.C. State, chances are you’ll have to do a good bit of walking in your daily commute to classes. For some disabled students and faculty, walking is easier said than done.

Assistant Professor Greg Sawicki, Postdoctoral Research Scholar Dominic Farris, and others at the Human PoWeR laboratory at N.C. State are working to make walking more comfortable and efficient for the impaired.

The ‘PoWeR’ in Human Power stands for Physiology of Wearable Robotics, and their laboratory is currently developing mechanic “exoskeletons” that can be worn on one’s legs to do much of the work necessary to walk efficiently. The Labs have developed several prototype exoskeletons, all focused primarily on improving the function of the ankle.

“One of the overarching goals of the laboratory is to build assistive devices,” Farris said. Farris says these mechanical ‘exoskeletons’ could potentially have two major applications. Their primary goal is to help people with impaired, imbalanced, and asymmetrical walking gaits, such as those who have suffered strokes, or spinal cord injuries.

Farris doing science.

The Human PoWeR labs are working on providing devices to assist impaired patients with improving their walking gait, but the Labs also recognize the more tragic side of reality.

“Some people will never recover,” Farris said. And for those people, another type of exoskeleton would be required– one whose purpose is for long-term sustainment rather than rehabilitation.

An early prototype of the exoskeleton features a pneumatic ‘ankle’. The prototype is made from molded carbon fiber, and works by sending a bout of compressed air to the mechanic joint to induce movement.

Another prototype of the exoskeleton features a spring that acts as a calf muscle.

The Human PoWeR labs aren’t the first to develop exoskeletons – in fact, several different types already exist. Farris says the problem with many of the other exoskeletons is that they

“Some of [the other exoskeletons] look quite amazing on the face of it, but they all require a source of power – large batteries…some are even gas powered.” The extra components required to power those exoskeletons create a lot of extra weight – and for every bit of weight you have, the less efficient the exoskeleton becomes.

Powerless Power

Don't worry; this is just a prototype. Stylish options including the sassy diamond-studded hot-pink model is currently in-production.

Farris says that the labs are trying to make the exoskeletons more lightweight and practical by removing all power sources. There is no external power, no motors – everything is completely mechanical and powered by the wearer. Instead, the latest prototype is powered by a spring-and-clutch mechanism. In the same way that your Achilles tendon uses your body weight to store energy, the fully-mechanical exoskeleton can be used to store the body’s natural energy instead of relying upon an external power source.

When you walk with the exoskeleton on, you lean into the spring to store energy – the same energy is released when you complete your step. Though the labs are working for light, practical, wearable robotics, the prototype Farris showed off in his laboratory still looked clunky and cumbersome.

Another application the PoWeR lab’s exoskeleton could have in the future is a military application. For soldiers who do not have an impaired gait or other walking disability, the exoskeletons could be used to prevent wear and tear on the natural skeleton to improve a soldier’s future heath.

The Human PoWeR labs have come a long way from their inception a year and a half ago, but they still have a long way to go until their prototypes become reality. Even though the Human PoWeR laboratory is currently focused on lower-limb function, one of the goals of this center is to involve other fields in their research to better serve the world.

“For example, stroke patients are affected all the way down their body, not just their legs – there are a lot of things you want to do with your arms as well,” Farris said. “Hopefully our lab will be shared with other specialists who can assist in things like that.”

Testing? Testing? 1…2…3…

Exoskeleton prototypes just don’t pop out of a researcher’s head and onto a drawing board without a little work. The Technician was invited into a testing session last Friday where the Human PoWeR lab got to show off all of their shiny gadgets.

Motion Capture

It's watching you. Lol just kidding, it doesn't have eyes; it's just tracking all of your movements.

In order to build an exoskeleton capable of mimicking the human gait, the researchers at the Human PoWeR labs had to actually figure out how the body works.

There are several motion-capture cameras hanging from the ceiling at the laboratory, which are all normally focused on the treadmill at the center of the lab. Little ping-pong ball-shaped sensors are attached to a person’s legs to monitor them in action.

                                                 Metabolic Cart

Breathe in here. For scienc

Measure the amount of oxygen a person uses while running or walking on the treadmill. From there, researchers can calculate the relative amount of energy that person uses, and thereby how difficult the task is.

Ultrasound

Researchers use an ultrasound machine to look at the muscles in a person’s leg as they use the treadmill. According to John Miller, one of the undergraduates leading the test, they are monitoring the muscles in the leg to figure out which muscles are the most important to the human gait.

High-Tech Treadmill

The treadmill at the centerpiece of the lab, and it’s not your standard gym equipment. The treadmill features a force-sensor which measures the amount of force being put on any part of the treadmill at any given time. The treadmill can also be inclined, which helps researchers examine what it is like to walk on different types of terrain.

Rate this:

So I work for a newspaper. Sort of.

Well, no; I do work for a newspaper; the Technician is the North Carolina State University newspaper, and I work as a Senior Staff Writer. It may not be the most glamorous newspaper in the world, but we do get 10,000 readers per day (or at least 10,000 papers mysteriously disappear from our stands every day), which is more than I can say for my blog, and more than I can say for some other school papers.

Part of my job description involves talking to strange, intriguing people, learning new things about everything, and goofing around in the office while waiting to edit. A dream job! It may not pay well, but working with the Technician has been a truly wonderful experience.

Anyhow, the reason I’m posting about my job today is because in today’s paper, my 950-word article on researchers making crazy awesome mechanical legs was cut down to 500 or so words to accommodate the space on the page. That part is completely understandable. We’re on a budget. Plus, they had to accommodate all the pretty pictures. But on the Technician’s website, the article is shortened as well. Why? I have no idea. Maybe if the story were lengthened by 400 bytes, the internet would break?

There’s a lot of good information in those 400 forgotten words, and it’s information I’d still like the public to know. That’s why I’ve decided to post my version of the article in this blog. And I might start doing that with other articles as well.

Every article will of course have links back to the Technician’s original article…I may also start linking to other Technician articles that I find interesting.

Anyhow. That’s my short rant for the day. Keep on the lookout for my articles.

Rate this:

A dear friend of mine was taken from this world tod–

You know what, I’m going to skip all of the false-lede stuff and skip right to the point: the government shut down Megaupload today. I’m sure everyone who’s ever been on the internet for more than an hour knows about Megaupload, and I’m sure at least half of you have used it before. For perfectly legitimate reasons, of course.

There’s no denying that a lot of people used the Megaupload service to obtain things that normally cost money, and for those people (I don’t know any of them personally, of course…) Megaupload shutting down is a terrible, earth-shattering event. But what about for the people who actually host legitimate files on the site, only to have them taken down in the blink of an eye. Hopefully, the FBI gave the files a dignified burial.

Dignity. Yep, that's what it looks like.

I had a few files on Megaupload at one point, and they were all legitimate files that I had created myself. They were .mp3s of my own music that I wanted to share with other internet acquaintances. Considering I made them in 8th grade, they weren’t that great, but that’s no reason to wipe them off the face of the planet forever!

Looking past my personal tragedy, I’m sure there are lots of other users with more important files on Megaupload’s servers. Hopefully they had backups of the files on their own computers so it won’t be too much of a loss…but it’s still an annoyance for people who had awesome things up for others to download. If they didn’t have their files uploaded to other similar sites, that’ll be really annoying.

I hope this mess gets sorted out soon. This debacle is costing me Anime Procrastination time…

Update:

Apparently the web-activist/terrorist group Anonymous shut down the websites for the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the websites for Universal Music, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). There’s a part of me that is screaming out of joy right now for the cruel wave of irony set forth by Anonymous. Then there’s the logical part of me that is thinking about the long-term ramifications of Anonymous’ actions. Their retaliation could move members of congress away from the anti-SOPA side. Hopefully every congressperson will realize that Anonymous is only one group and does not speak for the entire internet, but people have been greatly influenced by way less than these cyber attacks…

Thoughts?

Rate this:

We sat in all the chairs yesterday.

The library at my university has lots of unique chairs, and ever since I first arrived last semester, it has been a goal of mine to try out all of them. Last week, I learned from a friend that sitting in all of these chairs is actually a major tradition at the school. Perfect! Our group’s shenanigans would at least have a plausible explanation this time…

On Sunday, I and three of my friends went to the library in the hopes of buying some delicious ice cream. Unfortunately for us and half the people who walked in at the same time for the same reason (Yep – no one goes there to actually study), the Creamery was closed for the night, despite their online store hours saying otherwise.

Deprived of ice cream and all hope of happiness for the evening, we decided the next best thing was frozen yogurt. A quick check on my iPhone revealed that…yes! Yes, there was a frozen yogurt place! And! And….!

…And it closed literally one minute ago.

“Baskin Robbins?” said one of my friends. Excellent idea! And we were in luck! There was one of those glorious purveyors of frozen cow juice right across the street! We left the comfort and warmth of the library and ran joyfully across the street to find that all of our dreams were laying in broken heaps right next to the “Closed” sign.

You should have seen us walking back to the library. It was pitiful. We looked absolutely downtrodden, defeated by the cruelty of fate….until one of my friends (let’s call her Jumpy) had the idea to take part in our University’s tradition, and sit in some chairs.

Friends? Fun? Chairs? Awesome! Sounds like a good time to me.

There were, however, two roadblocks in the plan. For the sake of posterity, I’ll call them Meanie and Party Pooper. They are pictured below.

You see, Meanie and Party Pooper don’t much care for sitting in chairs or anything fun like that. Their idea of fun is to whine about being bored and then not even have the decency to sit in a giant globe chair and spin around really fast making airplane noises like a normal person. Don’t get me wrong: I love Meanie! And old Party Pooper is ace in my book. They even gave the whole chair thing a fighting chance…but I guess when times are tough, you just can’t rely on them to take sitting seriously.

Anyway, here’s the documentation of our stint as Chair Connoisseurs.

Draw me like one of your French women.

I lied before, by the way. These aren’t all the chairs. These aren’t even half of the chairs on the first floor of the library. The thing is, sitting in chairs is more fun when you do it in a group of more than two people. Maybe when the party poopers get a little less grumpy, there’ll be a Chairs Part II. Until then, happy sitting!

Rate this:

I had a nightmare last night. Absolutely terrifying.

Though not as scary as 80s movies...

My best friend and I went to a Santana concert (That’s not the nightmare part; I love Santana!) for his birthday. Santana opened the concert with one of my personal favorites, Black Magic Woman. The crowd went wild and cheered like…well, people at a Santana concert.

Musicians must be ridiculously busy these days; Right after Black Magic Woman, he announced that the next one would be his last for the night.

His next song was familiar to me somehow; not because I’d heard it on one of his albums or anything…it felt more…personal. That’s when I realized – he was playing my song! I’ve been working on Jazz piece for about a week now, and Santana was playing it onstage, but better because he’s freaking Santana.

Granted, that made absolutely no sense when I woke up. I’m pretty familiar with Santana’s style, and I’m almost certain he wouldn’t be caught dead playing the sort of song I’ve been working on. What’s more, he didn’t have the instruments necessary. But still, my nightmarish encounter made me worry that I actually did steal the melody for the song from somewhere. Maybe not Santana. Maybe not even a Jazz song – but maybe I heard it once in passing…?

Fun fact: Cryptomnesia is the word for attributing a stroke of someone else’s brilliance to yourself, without realizing it. It’s as if your brain decides to buy a novel, or a CD, tears off the label, hands it to you in the form of some sort of Gelatinous Idea Goop, and then tells you to write it. And then when it’s time for you to present a demo tape to your favorite record company, you look like a dummy because the whole thing’s just covers of Disney songs.

Has this ever happened to anyone? I almost stole a melody once. While it wasn’t a note-for-note rip-off, you could definitely tell where it was from. Luckily, I realized it mid-song and stopped the monstrosity before it even had a chance to take its first breath.

After a careful listening of the last several Jazz songs I remember hearing, I am now fairly confident that my work is my own, but still…it makes me sort of nervous…

Rate this:

Superheroes live on my Residence Hall, and I’m one of them. Apparently.

You wouldn't like me when I'm on my period.

While we were gone for winter break, our resident advisor drew superheroes and with our names on them, and put them on our doors, prompting every sane-minded individual who saw them to slip into a nerdgasm-induced coma.

I would much rather have Robin as my roommate. Even dressed like this.

Sure, the drawings aren’t quite up to Stan Lee’s scrutiny, and they’re not exactly, er…proportional, but the RA worked hard! When’s the last time you came home to your very own superhero?

Not pictured: Dignity.

Speaking of superheroes, I’m reminded of the time about a year ago when my friend and I co-wrote an essay arguing who would win in a fight: Superman or Mary Poppins. As you could probably guess, Mary Poppins won hands-down.

I don’t have the original essay with me, but I remember the key points clear as crystal:

1. Both Superman and Mary Poppins can fly; however, Superman can fly swiftly on his own power, whereas Miss Poppins must solely on wind-power, and prefers to travel at a leisurely pace. With Superman’s speed and superhuman strength, clipping the neurotic nanny out of the air would be no problem at all.
Winner: Superman

2. Superman’s weakness is well-known to the world by now; assuming Mary Poppins is up do date on her comic book characters (as she should be), she’d know all about Superman, and even his alter ego Clark Kent. To be fair, Superman could watch the movie and know a little about Poppins, but what could he do about it? Kidnap the innocent chimney sweep and lure her into a trap? Adopt two bratty kids, compelling her to travel to his Fortress of Solidude, and then lure her into a trap? Mary don’t play that bs. Plus, we don’t really learn that much about Mary. For all we know, she could have been an agent sent by a hostile alien race to gather intelligence on Britain’s most insufferable children. Superman’s life isn’t a mystery at all. It’d just take one quick walk to the local underground comic book store with the one-eyed shopkeeper who looks at you like you’re the first human he’s seen all week. (Or like he’s missing an eye….)

In addition to all that, Mary Poppin’s magical bag (stolen from Poppins by a frumpy teenage witch in 1998) seems to contain every item known to man. If she digs around long enough, she’s sure to find something at least resembling Kryptonite, which she could very handily convince Superman to eat with a song and a dollop of sugar.

Winner: Mary Poppins
3. Mary Poppins is well-versed in the ancient art of forcing people to dance and sing to never-before-heard music both in public and in the privacy of other dimensions. If she was so inclined, she could easily get a crowd of a few hundred or so people to dance around Poppins, acting as meat shields for the Dark Queen. Superman would never intentionally harm a civilian, and so he would be utterly hopeless trying to fight her in a crowd. As for Mary? Well, she clearly does not give a damn who she mows down in her quest for carnage. She’d beat up Superman, then kick a puppy or something just for fun.

Champion: Mary Poppins

Long live Mary Poppins.
Enjoy MLK day, everyone.

Rate this:

For those of you who know me in real life, it shouldn’t come as such a surprise that I’m writing a play. Not that a lot of people know I’m writing it, it’s just the sort of thing you’d expect me to be doing while juggling at least twenty-three other creative endeavors. The thing is, writing a play is tough work. Like, really tough work.

Well, maybe not for most people. Maybe everyone else on earth can just finish a masterpiece of a full-length play in a few hours, slap a fancy title on it, and have it on Broadway in a matter of days — but I sure as hell can’t.

It doesn’t even help that I have everything planned out – that I know exactly what’s going to happen every step of the way. When it comes to me sitting down and actually writing everything down, it’s tough work!

To make matters worse, there’s a time limit. If you play video games, you know that the sudden addition of a time limit can strike fear into the heart of the most confident of gamers. Especially if its BRIGHT RED AND FLASHING AND sHaKInG aRoUnD– OH GOD!

It doesn’t even matter if the game developers gave you five extra minutes to spare — if you’ve never been through the level before, you may notice yourself panicking a bit. You may notice yourself making stupid mistakes that you’d never make if that damned clock wasn’t staring you in your face telling you to HURRY THE HELL UP!

My time limit happens to be April 2nd. April 2nd also happens to be the last date to enter a Creative Artist contest my university has. Coincidence? Pssht, no. I want that prize!

To my puny human mind, April 2nd seems pretty far away. I mean, I have half of January, and all of February and March to finish the thing. That seems like a long time to finish a play. But thinking you have more time than you actually do is every procrastinator’s folly.

Maybe just writing an excellent play would be an easy thing to do in a few month’s time, but if you knew me at all, you’d know I wouldn’t possibly just do one thing when there’s an excellent opportunity to show off seven!

What’s fairly unique about my play is that it employs music, but it’s not a musical (no singing). I guess you could say it’s a play with a movie score attached to it, all written by the same person: me.

Awesome, I thought when I had the idea, I can do that no problem!

And I could probably do it without any worries at all — If it weren’t for that time limit.

Because of a bunch of things going on inside my head and out in the real world, I haven’t really been able to finish a piece at my leisure in a few weeks. I’m close to finishing exactly 1.7 metric $#!tloads of musical pieces, but lately I’ve been getting really weird about actually finishing them. I’ll sit down at my desk, ready to tackle all those scary empty bars of music, and….

Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ll write some, call it stupid, delete it and then move onto something else.  As a result, I haven’t finished anything in a while….

Maybe the time limit isn’t that bad of a construct. Unless I have a time-limit ticking away, I usually just finish things whenever I want to; whenever I feel inspired. That’s nice I guess – unless you get lazy like I have lately. One thing time-limits can get you to do in video games is make you go absolutely insane.  You’ll try anything and everything to get past the level, and what’s more, you’ll do it quick and in a hurry.

So hopefully this time limit thing will be a good thing for me. It’s already done wonders for my writing pace – I’ve been writing at least page a day of the play’s dialogue, which is amazing for me since I’m usually too lazy to actually work on something. Hopefully the time limit will also force me to work on the music instead of doing something distracting like posting a blog ent–

Rate this:

It was 5:36, and I have a stalker.
Those were two things I learned from opening my computer this afternoon.

I had just received an email from the ever-reliable Microsoft informing me that they were going back on their 2005 promise to provide free website hosting for life. I can’t say I wasn’t expecting this sooner or later – and I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft was only rescinding their offer to me, seeing as I rarely do anything with my website. Why don’t update my website? Suffering a brief moment of memory loss, I decided to check out the old website/blog, and see if I could spruce the place up a bit. I logged into WordPress, and to my surprise, saw that there was one pending comment for one of my past posts. It was from anonymous commenter whose email address [redacted] denoted the sender as some sort of Wind-Girl. Strange.

“Hi Hassan” the message said. I froze. How could anyone on the internet know my name? My real name – coincidentally one of the best-kept secrets in cyberspace? My mind went blank, recalling every acquaintance I had ever met. Lets see…the doctor who assisted in the birth…the nurses…my mother, of course…but none of those people would know my internet alter-ego.

Would I have been so careless to let my name slip in the heat of some fate-of-the-world-deciding internet debate? Of course not. Besides, Imagine how awkward that would be.

AXMAN13: LOLZ WTF LIBERALS SUCK HAHA OH AND GHEY MERIGE IS WIRED LULZ HAHA!!11!!! GLOBL WORMING IS A LYE!!!
MALEXOS: I can see how you’d think that, but I think you should re-examine the situation a bit more carefully. By the way; I’m Hassan. You come here often?
AXMAN13: OMG LOLZ WTF TAHTS SO COOOL DO IT AGAIN!
MALEXOS: Do what aga–….why do I even bother?

Damn. This was really getting to me. If this mysterious girl — wait, no; this is the internet — If this mysterious middle-aged man knew my name, what’s stopping him from discovering my deepest, most well-kept secrets? What’s to stop him from figuring out where I live? Where I work? My bathroom-related habits?! I couldn’t let this continue, but I had no idea where to go next? What could I do? Stalk the streets asking for a man named Wind-Girl? The stares I’d get would be the least of my worries…
Eventually, it hit me: If someone’s stalking me, why not stalk them back? I thought. I did a Google search for the Wind-Girl. Aaaaand…No such luck.

Damn! What a Google’s supposed to know everything! Or at least know where to find everything! Where are are tax-dollars going if Google can’t even hunt a few stalkers?

But I couldn’t let the situation get the best of me. I would have to persevere in the face of limited technology. That’s when a second thought thing hit me: I decided I should just email this self-proclaimed female, and see what he’s up to. If his intentions are good, I’m certain a swift and friendly explanation will be on its way to my inbox soon! If not, well…I don’t think anyone would notice if I didn’t post for a while anyway.

“Dear Wind-Girl”, the email began…