Matt Burton-Kelly's home on the Web
THE question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question.
It is a philosophical question. Scientism, the view that science can explain all
human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition,
one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science
to say so.
–Leon Wieseltier, The New York Times, 19 February 2006
I was reading (as I seem often to do) Rob Helpychalk’s blog, when it occurred to me the differences in design. His is white, with nicely arranged photographs to the right, simple text, many links on the right side. Mine, in contrast, is dark, with a messy background, and probably poorly-chosen coloring. Which is the better blog? Which is the more professional?
This is a question that has been nagging at me for some time now, simply because I am getting to the point where I will have to worry about what people will learn of me on the internet. Not that I particularly care, as I am a rather forgiving person, but there seems to be a large and larger problem with the seperation of one’s personal life and one’s professional life, due to the ease of which a potential or current employer can access what you blog. While I may not be ashamed of being in a band of sorts, will I be passed over in the future because someone is afraid I will sing at work?
Granted, this sort of thing in my field, as far as I believe, is not much of a problem. I’ve yet to meet a geologist who won’t pretty much accept you as you are.
In general though, I would like to think about the differences in design philosophy. What makes one site more ‘professional’ than another? Content is number one. No matter how polished your layout, I doubt that many people will casually overlook your stories about being a neonazi or having questionable relationships with farm animals*.
Layout must a be a close second. If only I had a copy of those studies I remember which talked about first impressions and overall opinion at a later date (in reference to web sites–I’m sure we all know how people react to first-impression data). Now the question is, is there a perfect layout? Can I be the best to everyone? Admittedly not. Actually, please comment on the fixed background image. Should it scroll along with everything else? Should it be lighter, in order to make it appear like there is more ‘space’ on the page to move around? I think that, although much darker than I would prefer (it was a quick photoshop effort), it expresses me well. In fact, when I actually do view the site, I am always surprised at how good it looks, as if I had expected it to grow horns in my absence.
I’d like to take an opportunity to say a word or two about personal information. There seem to be three or four types of sites that can be officially described as ‘blogs’: 1) the personal life blog. What I did today and here are some photographs of my pet sheep. 2) the personal emotional blog. I’ve been feeling like this, but it’s up to you to actually know me in person in order to understand everything. 3) the professional blog. I do this at my job, and the problems we worked out today were x, y and z. 4) the opinion blog. You don’t need to know who I am, just what I have to say.
This blog is in transition, at least it feels like it could be, from type 2 to type 4. This is for a combination of reasons including quasi-professionalism in the jungle and simply the fact that it doesn’t seem important to expose every aspect of myself to the world.
Excuse me, as I have run out of steam.
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*This may, in fact, gather you more sympathy than you may be looking for. It all depends on how you swing I suppose.
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=47.923993&lon=-97.030347&z=18.4&r=0&src=2
where i am.
Complete Article, courtesy USGS.
Forensic, Art, and History Studies – Calcareous nannofossils have been used to help police solve criminal cases. For example, clay scraped from the shoes of a murder suspect in England contained calcareous nannofossil species that were unique enough to lead the police to the scene of the crime. Calcareous nannofossils have been used to determine the origin of building stones for Medieval churches in Denmark and to check authenticity of paintings. In Norway, which has no native chalk, calcareous nannofossils were used to determine the origin of white chalk that was used to prepare the surfaces of Medieval wooden sculptures and panels before painting. The pattern and changes through time of the chalk trading routes probably can be used to interpret general trading patterns in northern Europe at the same time.
Source of interest: SCHULTE, P., R. SPEIJER, H. MAI, AND A. KONTNY. 2006. The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-P) boundary at Brazos, Texas: sequence stratigraphy, depositional events and the Chicxulub impact. Sedimentary Geology, 184:77-109.
[EDIT: As cool as I think it is that all you people are coming to my site for solutions to your Palm problems, it would be really great if you could leave a comment as to whether any of these worked for you, or to let me know about something I did not mention previously. Also, there is the rest of the site to browse, which would be nice.]
Per request, I’m going to add a little more detail on how I fixed my Palm E2 yesterday.
The problem I was dealing with was this: When I turned the Palm on, it would emit a high-pitched squealing noise, sort of like the one you get when you have an old television that needs to warm up a little bit before you can see what is on the screen. It was highly directional, and seemed to be coming directly out of the screen. If you tilted the screen away from you slightly, the noise lessened. Tapping the screen to enter data modified the intensity of the noise, but not necessarily the tone, and ‘flexing’ the entire device did approximately the same thing.
Similar problems do exist, as outlined at Just-blog
, which may or may not be caused by the same thing, such as a similar noise coming from only one part of the device. I’m not prepared to offer advice in terms of other problems at this time.
SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
Just-blog presents as a solution overclocking the Palm processor in order to change the frequency of the internal clock and therefore of the screen, which could be the source of the squeal. While this did not work for me, a software fix for this problem is usually preferable for people who do not want to take their device apart. Multiple overclocking programs exist for various Palm devices, but for the E2 all I was able to find were Warpspeed and PXA Clocker.
If you are looking to overclock another advice, I suggest using the ‘search’ feature on your browser to check out Just-blog
and searching for your model number.
HARDWARE SOLUTIONS
Do not despair if overclocking your Palm does not work! There is another solution, posted by junglemike at Brighthand that fixed my Palm E2 in about 15 minutes. Apparently, the problem is due to some odd proximity effect of the digitizer on the screen itself. The steps are the same as illustrated, but I have some additional suggestions:
* Be not afraid of the star-fangled screws holding it together. A small flathead screwdriver will work on them, or a very small allen wrench.
* When pulling the case apart, you are going to need to pop it really hard, so don’t be afraid of it. The two things I did do were disconnect the battery initially (the plug pops off and on easily) and lose the power button for a couple minutes because it flew off when I finally got the case apart.
* The digitizer is on top if the screen, and note that there is a connection between the two that you should NOT mess with inadvertently while you are prying them apart.
* For the material between the screen and the digitizer, I used a full sheet of thick clear plastic (from a box some window blinds came in), but it is possible to use overhead transparencies or even a couple layers of foil or regular paper around the edges. You don’t need to block the whole screen, you just need to get the digitizer away from it by a little bit. I suggest plugging everything in and testing it while you have the Palm apart in order to see how much of an effect you are having on the noise.
I hope this was of help to someone, but it’s really those sites mentioned above that fixed my problem for me. If there are any more questions, I am glad to be of service.
I was talking to the girl next to me in stats this morning about something, and the topic turned to what we were ‘doing’ in school. She is in for speech therapy or whatever the department is called here (CSD?), and I had to admit I was here for graduate geology. She asked where I had gone to uni, and I told her, of course. So she looks at me and says, “where are you from?” and I said Vermont.
She just stared at me:
“What are you doing here?
(if you haven’t read part I yet, please do so.)
I live over a bar in downtown Grand Forks, which is one of the reasons I am still up right now. Although I can sleep through most anything, the combination of it being Friday night and it being slightly noisy downstairs allows me to stay up later than I normally would. If you want to know how the bar is, I couldn’t tell you, since I haven’t been down to visit it. I arrived here in the beginning of January (having left directly after New Year’s Day, the party celebrating which was sufficiently spectacular, and hopefully will contribute to the continuing tradition) during a warm spell. Yes, it was above freezing in North Dakota up until a few days ago, and this morning it was positively (but only barely) chilly on my way to my 8 am class.
I have a great desire to meet new people, but little forceful enough motivation, and I am out of practice. So it goes. I say this not to whine about not knowing anybody, simply as a state of fact, and I am sure that I will cure myself of this eventually, as I open myself up to more and more people each day I am on campus. I see little point in making my way through the smokey barroom tonight or any night though, or, as I should say, I am afraid of going down and trying to meet people. I’d rather go relax somewhere than deal with noise and expensive drinks (although my solution to that is to come back upstairs . . . the drink part anyway!) Perhaps I am different than other people in this, but there are times when I can be incredibly social, and people expect it of one, do they not? I’m half kidding; I know how to act towards people, but the effort of being exactly what everyone expects me to be wears after a while. This is not coming out right at all, but those of you who know me know who I am, and I doubt that anyone else’s snap jusdgements based upon reading this will affect me much in any case.
I would gladly play my guitar or sing or perform in front of any number of people without feeling poorly about it at all [Wow! How things change over time. This is an interesting comment when juxtaposed against the previous paragraph. 2014-02-04]. The rush of the spotlight is always fun, and I guess that’s part of the reason I am the way that I am, not always wanting the center of attention but needing it sometimes. It’s a substitute drug for all those that I have never done. The same feeling comes from racing: the pure thought of it throws me into an adrenalin rush. That’s where I seek approval the least, I suppose. Winning or losing, singing well or not, I feel the same (perhaps losing a race is different for awhile, but if I did what I could, I can’t ask for more). The past is in the past, embrace the present and the future, in equal parts as situations dictate. I enjoy entertaining.
This little sketch would not be complete without my love of learning in general, which probably should have been in part I, but permeates most of my decisions. New situations are always useful in learning, and if this sounds hypocritical to my not going down to the bar tonight, then you can chalk it up to my being a poor student whose loan hasn’t been disbursed yet. I enjoy doing new things, but that ‘kick’ to get over it and just do something is sometimes a large one. I read a great deal, listen to people a lot (both to my friends and to strangers), and am working on my own theories of different psychology and how it relates to myself, for how can one learn psychology without it being in reference to themselves? I cycle and run, I am very competitive in almost everything I do. Music makes me happy.
What more could you ask?
A little midnight blogging, just because I’m here, and because I feel like writing/explaining, so this shoudl be a good place for it. I suppose that this blog varies in topic a great deal–it is a personal blog, but anyone googling my name the right way can find it quite easily, including potential employers in the future, present fellow students, and colleagues.
Whether what I say here means anything to them one way or another is up to them–I certainly am making no attempt to portray myself in a way that makes me look better than I actually am, no matter how you slice it. That said, I am not blogging my entire life, for a number of reasons: first, that would take up too much of my time, and my time lately has been spent enough using the computer as it is; second, there are aspects of my life I don’t want to spread out for the whole world to see, because although I am an open book to people who know me, that comes as a prerequisite for getting all the goods; third, I don’t think it will interest anyone, as much as I could try to fancy it up with great english prose style (or in the style of any other language), and to do that would, again, take more time out of my life than I am prepared to give.
This is still a personal blog, and as cheaply as possible, a personal blog includes things that interest you. I see something on the internet, and I drop a link. It is a bad habit, to be sure, but so it goes. There are times like these when I will discourse about my day, and maybe include some little of my psyche. Think of it as a cross between a documentary and any plot-driven (as opposed to character-driven) television show: You need to think in order to understand me. I know that my close friends are typically my only readers, but I like to think that I can speak to a greater audience than the people who are closest to me. We all want to be known, and the blogging revolution has given everyone their own 15 digital minutes of “fame.” barring the fact that most of the world does not have this ability.
If you don’t already know, I am currently a Masters student in Geology at the University of North Dakota, in Grand Forks. I plan for my focus to be in vertebrate paleontology, but it is only my first semester here and I am taking classes to make up for not having taken them during my undergrad, which was at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY (that’s up-upstate, 18 miles from Canada, in case you don’t know) where I received a BS in Geology.
My Honors thesis at SLU was entitled “An analysis of multiple trackways of Protichnites Owen, 1852, from the Potsdam Sandstone (Late Cambrian), St. Lawrence Valley, NY,” and can be found at SLU or by contacting me directly. Essentially, I studied an outcropping of ~500 ma Potsdam Sandstone in northern New York which contained a collection of what have been interpreted as early arthropod trackways. Since the Potsdam is a beachfront formation, the question arises of whether or not these (and similar trackways found in southern Quebec and Ontario) were produced subaerially (i.e., on dry land) or underwater. This is an important point to consider because the oldest known terrestrial (land-dwelling) animals stem from approximately this point in the history of the earth, and so there was a fairly serious change in lifestyle occurring for the organisms in question: the transition of species from marine (or even fluvial/lacrustrine) to amphibious to fully terrestrial settings. To make matters more interesting in the field, no body fossils have yet been discovered in this formation, leaving our idea of what produced these trackways up to a combination of imagination and “best guess” according to what data we already have from other localities around the world and throughout the rock record. Finally, if this isn’t enough, the ichnogenus (“ichnos” = trace or track) Protichnites was first described in 1852 (by Sir Richard Owen of the British Museum), and has since encompassed a very wide variety of forms, many of which bear little resemblance to one another!
While my current educational goal is not to focus on this research, it remains an ongoing interest of mine.
Seems Steve has put our Alaska guidebook up on the web. So if you want to see a poor example of my writing (from sophomore year, no less), please download it here.
The Internet has changed the world. Now for all the things I have said that I thought were true–someone, somewhere, on a server has them. I can’t complain about this, because yes, I did say some things that are probably factually wrong. And for this I am sorry–sorry that I have propagated useless and misleading information. I wonder . . . O well.
Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday requires some reflection, I suppose. I’ve been thinking about it most of the day, although not in a normal sense.
King was a black man, fighting for equal human rights for all people, regardless of race, I wonder what he would say if he were in this country today. Do you think he would be happy or sad at the way it all turned out? Would he be proud of the public persona used by so many black people today, based upon the leaders of today–not scientists or engineers or writers, but Snoop Dogg?* Or would he lament at the continuing divide between people of different races and cultures?
I’m not taking a side. Well, I am, but I don’t mean to put down any particular aspect of life of ANY race. Our culture in this country is this way because WE make it that way. We can’t blame it on our fathers and grandfathers, but neither can we blame “the other side.” Gandhi said “Be the change you wish to see in the world,”** and he was right. WE have to be the ones who complete Dr. King’s Dream.
I don’t advocate violent means to do this, just a change in perception. The first change needs to be yourself–how do you (whatever your race) view a member of another race? Do you recognize it as the first thing you see? Or does it not matter to you? What is your reaction? When you see a white person, do you make sure they can’t grab your wallet as they pass?
It’s something I need to remind myself of all the time. Growing up in Vermont does not prepare you for meeting people who are different in many ways–and new things are scary. But most of the time it’s fun to learn, and I hope that we can all learn together.
There, that ends my pseudo-sappy language for the month.
[*Why did I pick on Snoop? Is he morally reprehensible? 2014-02-03]
[**Actually, I think he never said this, but he expressed this idea at some point and it’s been whittled down to this phrase. 2014-02-03]