Resolution Success and Failure

If you remember my blog posting on New Year's Day, I posted several resolutions. Since I have achieved one of the goals I set out for myself.  So, here is an update:

1. Spend one month as a vegetarian: Well, I haven't started my month yet, but I have been working up to this, eating a lot more tofu and vegetables and really limiting the meat that I have been eating.  I have gone several days where the only animal products that I have had is the Dashi (Ground dry fish) that is in the miso I like to drink.  It's not that I wan't to be a vegetarian, I don't (I really do enjoy eating meat).  It's just that I want to live a healthier lifestyle, and this is a way to ease into it.

2. Log at least 200 miles of exercise (walking and jogging) on my pedometer: DONE!!!  Since January 1, 2013, I have logged 204.3 miles (see below), and  I'm also happy to say that I have put on a lot of those miles jogging instead of just walking.

3. Loose the other 30lbs that I'm trying to take off:  Oh extra pounds, why do you want to stay on me so much.  I think we really need to separate, I don't want you around anymore.  So, I dropped about 15 lbs so far, but I haven't lost an ounce in the last 8 weeks or so, despite my best efforts.  It is starting to get really difficult to stay motivated, but my BMI is still higher than 30 (obese) so I still have a long way to go.

4. Make at least one new friend:  The intention of this was to make a new friend outside of the internet, since I make friends easily on-line, but I am pretty shy in person.  I still have 6 months to go.

5. Jog 5K without stopping:  I was able to do 3.1 miles (5K) once, but I haven't been able to repeat it (so I don't consider this one accomplished yet).  I try to jog at least 6 miles a week (over 3 days), but I normally tucker out at around 2.2 miles (3.5 km) and need to stop.  If I could make progress with #3 (above) this might be easier.

6. Post a blog post at least every two weeks:  I have totally failed at this.  but I can try to be better.

I've also added another goal for the year.

7. I want to be able to do the front splits again:  I have been stretching every day, and doing Yoga, so I'm hoping I can achieve this by the end of the year.

Super Science Girls

So, my two heroes for this week is Sara Volz of Cheyenne Mountain High School in Colorado and Sylvia Todd of Auburn California.

Sara Volz just won the Intel Science Talent Search and pocketed $100K for her project entitled Nitrogen Stress and Artifical Selection as Methods to Induce Lipid Synthesis.

For those of you who don't speak "Science Nerd", what this means is that this clever girl was able to selectively breed alge to increase their production of oil (Lipids).  The way she did this was to use nitrogen (In the form of the weed killer sethoxydim) to stress her alge cultures, which forced a sort of artifical "Survival of the Fittest" type of evolution in the alge.  Kind of like the way an antibiotic kills bacteria cells.  Then she was basically trying to breed alge that was resistant to the weed killer in much the same way bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. The alge cells that were able to survive the Nitrogen stress, also produced more oil.  So basically she bred alge that is designed specifically to produce oil for biofuels.


So, she designed an build the bioreactor when she was in 9th grade (OMG like wow!).

Sylva Todd is the host of the YouTube channel Sylvia's Super Awesome Maker Show.  In this show she uses everything from Chemistry to Electronics to  make really cool stuff. Oh, and did I mention she is only 11 years old.

She uses the plethora of stuff that is available these days to make really amazing stuff, like the Arduino board that I talked about several months back.  She makes things like Silly Putty, Digital Clocks, and even her own printed Circuit boards. 

She likes to build robots and recently won a silver medal at the international robotics competition, which also included a trip to the White house to show off her robot that paints pictures.

Keep up the great work ladies.

zebra nails?

I totally love having fun with my nails.  I put this mani together using a base coat of Play the Peoneese (By OPI) and the stripes using Licorice (By essie).

I was kind going for zebra stripes By I think they look a little bit more like cow spots.  Nevertheless it is still a fun mani.

Art History Through Literature

I think that Tracy Chevalier has created a wonderful way to learn art history.  More specifically the art of Johannes Vermier.  You might remember him from such works as "The Milkmaid", "The Music Lesson" and most famously, "The Girl with a Pearl Earring".

In the novel by Ms. Chevalier, that shares a name with this famous painting, she creates a work of historical fiction that chronicles an intense emotional affair between the famous painter, and his beautiful new housekeeper Griet.   She is a 17 year old girl who has been forced to provide for her family since her father lost his sight in a workplace accident.  She begins as a simple maid with the unique task of cleaning the studio of her master Johannes Vermeer.  He takes a liking to her and soon she is mixing paint and working as an apprentice to the famous painter in secret.  In a fun way, the novel comes to life because many of Vermeer's paintings depict characters in the novel.  For example the Milkmaid depicts the head housekeeper Tanneke from the novel, and as you might expect, the face in the title painting is meant to be the young housekeeper Griet. Even though most of the characters in the novel are fictional creations and have very little correlation with the actual people pictured in Vermeers painting, the images still breath life into the novel. Additionally many of the images depicted in Vermeer's paintings are set in the corner of his studio and are lit from a window in that corner.  This allows the reader to visualize a small part of the world depicted in the novel. 

Overall I really enjoyed this novel, and I also enjoyed the film adaptation starring Scarlet Johansson, which basically followed the book with very little deviation.  

Diet and Exercise Part 2

If you remember my last diet and exercise post  back in October, I was bragging about how my pedometer had just passed 50 miles.  Well I am happy to say that I have stuck with my exercise routine, and my pedometer just broke 150 miles (yay. me!!!)

I know I mentioned in my last post how much I loved the Ultimate Pedometer GPS+ app for my IPhone. It has worked wonders for keeping me on-track with my exercise (and I'm down another 15lbs.  Size 10 here I come).  The best part is that, while I started just walking, I have moved up to jogging 2-3 days a week (and walking on the others).  I can almost jog 2 miles without needing to stop.

In addition to the walking/jogging that I have been doing, I have also gotten much better about stretching every day.  I miss being flexible and I am determined to be able to do the splits again.  I have also dabbled a little with Pilates to strengthen my core, but I must confess I have not been nearly as good about that.

Until next time, TTFN.

Cloud Atlas

So finally I got a chance to see the "Cloud Atlas" movie this past weekend, so I can offer up my complete review of the book and the film.

I read the book Cloud Atlas, by David Michell, in November during a business trip to Korea.

The book tells 6 different stories that are set in time periods ranging from the early 19th century to the distant future.  All of the stories are linked in such a way that one of the characters in next story (chronologically) is able discover a record of the previous story.  Additionally, the stories are intertwined in a nested fashion.  That is, the earliest story, written as a journal set in the early 1800s which ends abruptly. The main character in the next story (set around 1920) finds the journal, but he tells that his reading reading cut off abruptly (just like us) and he is missing the second half of the Journal. In a similar way, each story leads to the next until we find ourselves in the far distant post apocalyptic future.  This final story, chronologically, is in the middle of the book, which creates a weird effect in that the overall story ends halfway through reading the novel.  At  the end of the story set in the far distant future, the main character recounts the ending of the  previous story, this continues until the novel ends by revealing the second half of the lost journal from the early 1800s.  

I think that the author's motivation behind nesting the stories the way he does is to give the reader a sense that our lives our connected to both the past and the future.  In doing so, he has written a novel that gives the reader a  real sense of the magnitude and scope of human society in a way that a novel set in a single time period does not.  I found myself particularly immersed in the story set in a future Korea since I was reading it while on a business trip there.  Overall, David Mitchell has written what I (and many others) consider to be a classic of modern literature where he explores some very important themes that reflect our place in the whole of human society.

In 2012, a film adaptation of Cloud Atlas was released starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. 

In truth, the film version should really be thought of as a supplement to the novel, since it would be utterly indecipherable had I not read the book.  Judging by the number of people who left the theater before the 3 hours of film had completed, I don't think this is an unreasonable assessment.  Nevertheless, having read the book before seeing the movie, I found the film to be quite enjoyable.  There were a few significant deviations from the novel, but most of the main themes where there, and rather than nesting the stories, the director chose to periodically switch between the various time periods.  I also felt that the film had a substantially more optimistic ending than the book. 

Happy New Year.

I'd like to wish everyone a delightful New Year, filled with Joy and Happiness!

I thought I'd start the new year off with a few resolutions.  I'm usually pretty good about keeping them so here goes.

1. Spend one month as a vegetarian, just to see what it is like, and if it really does make me healthier.
2. Log at least 200 miles of exercise (walking and jogging) on my pedometer.
3. Loose the other 30lbs that I'm trying to take off.
4. Make at least one new friend.
5. Jog 5K without stopping (so I can enter a 5K zombie run).
6. Post a blog post at least every two weeks.

See everybody in 2013

Chemistry Sets

I'm sorry that it has been so long since I have posted.  I have been meaning to do a review of the book Cloud Atlas (by David Mitchell), which I loved, but I missed my chance at seeing the movie in the theater and I have been waiting on the DVD so I could watch the film before I do my review.

Anyway, on to the purpose of this post.  I just read an article in the NY Times about the history and and current status of my favorite toy growing up, The Chemistry Set.  After spending some time scouring the internet, I found a picture my first chemistry set.

I was 8 years old when my parents finally gave in to all my incessant nagging, and bought me the only toy I had wanted for for the entire previous year.  I fondly remember the years of joy that it brought to me, and the terror that it brought to my parents. It had fun and dangerous chemicals like Sodium FerroCyanide, Cobalt Chloride and Ferric Ammonium Sulfate, that, if you followed the directions, you could mix up and get blue and green stuff in your test tubes, or you could just mix stuff together and get weird (probably toxic) smells and you could give your parents nightmares about exploding houses.  It even had a dried up frog that you could dissect with the razor sharp scalpel that came in the kit (Yeah, I was a bit of a scary little girl).

Well, anyway, go to a toy store today and try to find a chemistry set to give to your precocious daughter or son.

While I have to admit, that making slime sounds like fun, the modern-day attitude that puts safety (really liability) ahead of everything else has produced a pretty watered down version of what I got to play with then I was a girl.  I just find it hard to believe that the scientific minds of the next generation will be inspired to greatness by "Spa-Science".  

But fear-not, real chemistry sets do still exist, they are just expensive and generally need to be bought on-line.

I am actually tempted to buy one of these and save it until the offspring is old enough, just in-case it is not available anymore when I am certainly hoping an interest in science is expressed.

If anybody actually reads these posts, please let me know in the comments what kind of dangerous toys you got to play with when you were growing up.

Banned Book Week. Part 3

So banned book week was from September 30 - October 6, and my plan was to read three banned books during that week.  The first two books  (here and here) written for teenagers and were read in about 3 days, the last one was serious adult literature and took me two weeks, which is why this post is arriving so late.

The third book that I read for this series was Song of Solomon, by Toni Morison.  

This novel tells the story of Macon Dead (III), a young black man born and raised in Michigan.  Throughout the early part of his life, he is defined almost entirely by the people around him.  As the story progresses he is is driven to take control of the direction of his own life, as he searches for the origin of his family roots, which are shrouded in mystery throughout the story.  

I posted a tweet, a week or so ago, about why High School makes you hate reading.  I think this novel is a case in point.  It is the sort of book that literary critics love because it is full of complex themes, and symbolic imagery, that makes some people feel smart.  The problem is that it's also the sort of book that can bore the rest of us to tears.  Now I'm not against any of those literary tools, provided they are not used at the expense of storytelling.  The story told in this book is not bad, in-fact, it is pretty good in some places.  The problem is that it's not great and at times the book meanders along at a pretty slow pace.  I feel a little more scholarly having read it, but I cannot say that it was particularly enjoyable.

Since this book was read in celebration of Banned Book Week, I suppose I should comment on how I feel about attempts to restrict the readership of this novel.  First and foremost, this is a novel for adults.  I don't care how many Nobel Prizes Toni Morrison has, this novel is not appropriate for kids under the age of about 15, it doesn't belong in Middle School Libraries, and I wouldn't be comfortable if it was assigned reading even for a High School student.  Nevertheless I think that any teenager mature enough to get through the first few chapters, could handle this book.

Diet and Exercise

If anyone is wondering why I don't post photos of anything besides my hands, its because I'm definitely a plus-size girl and I really don't like how I look in photos.  Nevertheless, I have been dieting and exercising pretty religiously for the past couple of months (I'm down 18lbs...Yea Me!).  I bought a pedometer application for my I-Phone, and it has been really helpful in keeping track of the miles I have walked.

As you can see, since Aug 23 I have logged 57.2 miles of walking.

So, here is the thing, diets are very hard for me.  I'm a girl who lives to eat, not eats to live.  I can't help it, I just love food.  However, I don't like the idea of "cheat days" on my diet, because they always seem to start a slippery slope right back to my old lifestyle.

That's when I came up with a great idea, rather than "cheat days"  I have "Earned Days".  So every time I log 25 miles on my pedometer, I get a day off from my diet.  The great thing about this is, if I exercise more, I get more days to eat the foods I love, exercise less, and I gotta stick with the diet longer.   Also because I earned my days off, I don't have to feel guilty enjoying desert.

Banned Book Week, Part 2

So the first  Banned Book in this series of posts was about a teenage girl, noq this one is about teenage boys.

The second book that I read for Banned Book Week (September 30- October 6) was The Chocolate War By Robert Cormier.

This book has the distinction of being one of the most frequently challenged books in the past 20 years.  It is written in subjective 3rd person, and tells the stories of several teenage boys who attend the all-boys Trinity Catholic School. Although the teachers are officially in charge of the school, the real power lies with a secret society of students called the Vigils.  The Vigils are effectively controlled by the officer known as the "assigner" which is held by Archie Costello, an intelligent,  manipulative sociopath whose thrives on risk and a lust for power.  I basically imagined him as a teenage version of Lex Luthor.

The primary challenges to this book appear to be mostly on sexual ground, although the only really sexual issues that we discover is that teenage boys masturbate a lot, something pretty much everyone knows already.  Nevertheless, I found this book to be pretty disturbing to me since overall it tended to glorify the villain and in some sense exculpate his actions.  The author, and many fans of the book, claim that the purpose of this is that it reflects the true reality of life.  Be that as it may, as a victim of bullying as a teenager I found the story (and particularly the ending) very disturbing.

Banned Book Week. Part 1

So, I went to the bookstore yesterday and bought three books to celebrate Banned Book Week.  I found it a little difficult to select the books from this list and this list, since I have read most of them already.

The first banned book that I read was What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones.

This is a book written for teenage girls that tells the story of Sophie, a smart gifted teenage artist, who completely respects herself and her body, and discovers what it means to love someone in that innocent teenage sort of way.  

The book is obviously banned because this is definitely the sort of thing we don't want our kids reading.  Yes it talks about how she likes making out with boys (what 15 year old girl doesn't) and sneaks off sometimes to do it, but she respects herself enough to never let it go any further than that (good for her).  Apparently the part that offends the most people is the following section:

Ice Capades

Sometimes

on chilly nights

I stand close to my bedroom window,

unbutton my nightgown

and press my breasts 

against the cold glass

just so I can see

the amazing trick

that my nipples can do.

Really, you are going to ban a book for that.  What girl hasn't done that.....ok, I admit I've never done that, but I probably would have if I read this book when I was a teenager, and do you know what, it would have been pretty awesome.  I'm sure I would have still turned out just fine. 

The book is pretty short, it only takes an hour or so to read, but I found myself feeling a bit like a teenage girl again when I read it.

My Arduino Board

Look at my new Arduino Board.

So, this little Arduino circuit board is an open source microcontroller.  For all you non-engineers out there, it is a circuit board that you can program really easily, and hook up any number of electronic devices and sensors to.  It is really easy to program, just by plugging it into your computer with a USB cable (get started here). There are lots of books and websites that are full of fun projects that use these little devices (Like this, and this, and this), that you can pick up at Radio Shack (or any number of other electronics distributors).  My boss' 15 year old daughter is using one to measure a bunch of temperature sensors for her science fair project.  So, there is no reason all for you nerdy ladies (and gentlemen) should not get one of these to play with.  

I plan on posting some of the fun projects that I plan on building with this little toy.

The Handmaid's Tale

So, I just finished reading The Handmaid's Tale, by Margret Attwood.  It tells the story of a theocratic society that rises from a revolution which occurred in a fictional near future of the former United States.  In this near future vision, industrial and nuclear pollution has rendered the majority of women infertile.  Because of this epidemic of infertility the upper ranks of society utilize a select group of still fertile women to act as "Handmaids".



The title of the book is inspired by the titles from the Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer), and the inspiration for the role of the "Handmaid" comes from a verse in the book of Genisis (30:1-3) 

"When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, Give me children or I shall die! Then she said, Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear upon my knees, and even I may have children through her.'"

Although I consider myself a  religious person,  the novel presents a vision of what could happen if all of the Christian zealots in the United States got everything they wanted.  It is not a rosy future.

There were a few things in the book (originally published in 1985) that were very forward thinking, and not a little bit scary.  In particular, it is mentioned that the use of electronic money transfer was one of the key elements in allowing the revolutionary group seize control of the former US population.  Because cash had become obsolete and not used, the revolutionaries were able to freeze the bank accounts of all the women in the country as well as (presumably) any political opponents.  In doing so, they were able to completely subjugate all the women in the country with one swift move.  The most foreboding aspect of this is that in today's society cash is becoming more and more obsolete, which is consolidating a tremendous amount of power in the hands of the people who control the electronic transfer of money.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the book an I highly recommend it.  Don't forget to read the final section titled "Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale", it is a clever epilog, written as an academic conference lecture set in the far future (approx 150 years after the events in the novel), that put a lot of the ambiguous parts of the story in perspective.   A movie was made in the early 1990s based on the book, which was pretty lousy. 

I'm back

Check out my cute nails. 

I guess I haven't posted in forever, so I'm going to try this blogging thing again.  I have recently discovered the Joys of Arduino and I think I might start posting some of my ideas and designs on here for the rest of the nerd world to see.  I'm going to intersperse the science and science fiction stuff with some fun fashion and style ideas too.  Hence the cute manicure I just needed to share a picture of. 

OK, so TTFN, expect much more on this blog in the coming weeks.

My blogging vision

So, I am just starting to get to know my way around the blogging world. It's kind of funny that I have been working with computers for many years, but I have never been all that interesting in following blogs or setting one up myself until recently.

I stumbled on a really neat blog recently that inspired me to set one up myself. The blog titled
What I wore today. It's kind of silly really, it is basically a woman who takes a picture of herself every day, to show the world what she is wearing. It looks like she is having alot of fun with a really simple idea, and I thought that I would like to have a little fun to. Although I am not into fashion that much (although her blog has inspired me to try to be a little more stylish in my appearance), I thought it would be fun to do a blog about something I am interested in. Nerdy Science Stuff.

I have looked at a few other woman scientist websites and most of them are about the academic experience of being a scientist. Although that is something that is part of life, I don't think it is what I want to talk about here. I think my goal is to talk less about myself, and more about stuff I find interesting. More about things, less about me!

This Blog is mostly for my thoughts and ideas. I'm definitely a science nerd, so I'm probably I am probably going to write about alot nerdy science stuff.