Saturday, March 6, 2010

A few fun pics and work update

Howdy.

Last weekend I had some visitors since Leanne's b-day party happened in S.F.  On account of that, Garrett stayed with me here at my place while they stayed in a hotel in the city.  Now, seeing as I now have a shiny new camera, I had to "test out" some new features and when better than when my little bro is in bed??!  :P

First, I'll give you glimpse of the tired crew that came to my pad soooo late... (past Scott's bed time)

When all the ladies left, Garrett and I talked for a bit (between the pounding of our noisy neighbors....  we weren't being loud, but the apartment has relatively thin walls).  The we slept, and the next morning, wonder of wonders, I was up and moving before little bro.  Now, I'm warning you, these are very rare pictures of a sleeping Garrett in the wild, so don't just go giving these out to anyone... :)



Much to my surprise, Garrett had been coated with a shiny new coat of paint during the night.  The bandits who did this didn't do a real good job though (see how they just shot him from the top?)



At first the little dog was a little scared to be in a photo shoot so early.  Here you can see his inner feeling amplified by my new camera.  Everyone is "yella" sometimes...



That shade of fear quickly evolved into a darker shade of emotion: embarrasement.  I told him that he should not be so embarrassed and pretend I'm not here.  So he went about the normal morning task of eating yogurt in bed.  Between you and me... I think he was still a little embarrassed... the camera doesn't lie.



Finally, after much persuasion and practice, he shed his fears and embarrassment to be the Garrett i know: the Garrett who is larger than life and whos lively color outshines the surroundings he's placed in.....   I don't know what to say about that expression though.  Quite frankly, it's a little disturbing, but gotta love the bro!

So that's it for the wacky morning pics, but I thought I would share kind of an interesting pic from work.  I have been "hunting" for the right model of the phenomenon happening in the dynamic system that I am modeling.  Late this week, I saw my first glimpse of that model in kind of a neat way.  This pic below is a rendering of a possible surface that represents the hysteresis (or "lagging behind") of my system compared to the input.  Kind of neat looking surface I thought.  Who knew I'd be constructing landscapes while I was here?!?!




This is kind of neat thing.. .to visualize something that you've only seen in your mind's eye and on academic papers....    I wont go into detail regarding what everything represents, 'cause that would probably be a little boring, but for those of you who have read some of the things I've written, the "left-to-right" dimension is "alpha", the "front-to-back" dimension is "beta", thus the triangular section of beta vs. alpha is the Preisach plane.  The height of the surface represents the gain of a particular hysteron in the plane.

Okie-dokie, I guess that's just about enough math stuff.  Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and catch up on what's happening in my life.  ;)

Laterz->Gav