What's in a name (or a tree)?

I think this might be a record for my blogging frequency!  Only just yesterday I gave you a lengthy update and here I am back at it again...  =)  too much good stuff to say, I guess.

Since I decided to not work on work over the rest of the weekend, I decided that maybe I'd see if I could make some progress on tree modeling (another back-burner project that's been cookin' for awhile now).  I have been reading about fractals and their recursive nature, and I was inspired that trees seem to show this same nature in the structure as well.  Since it has long been a goal of mine to mathematically model a tree, a logical place to start is to generate the static structure or skeleton of a tree automatically (this takes forever to do by hand).

Today was my first shot at trying to actually implement some code to do this in MATLAB, but low and behold, it worked out alright.  This is only a 2-dimensional version, but you'll get the idea.  It can be easily extended into 3D.  After some trial and tribulation, here is a tree to chew on...  this tree has 3 branches per level and is 4 levels deep.

by changing a couple of numbers, I can very quickly generate a new tree with very different structure...

I am of course still working on the details, so these are only rough-draft trees, but it is exciting to get some visual results so quickly.  Part of why these trees don't look familiar (Beyond the fact that they are perfectly generated and perfectly symmetrical) is that a real tree has gravity acting on it which pull weaker branches down and makes it look a little less upright.  this algorithm is really generating trees that you might think of as having grown upside-down!   of course, it would also help to have thicker lines for the bigger branches, etc.  but all in good time.

 Just a few more variables to throw in their for me to get pictures that will look more like the trees we are trying to model, but this is a good start for today.

I hope y'all have a great week!  G-out

On the state of "Gavin-a-roo" =)

ey there, sports fans!  I am right in the middle of a relaxing Saturday afternoon, so I thought that I'd post an update on how things are going around here...

Work is going well (though one of the other guys in the office remarked that he didn't see too much going "well," rather he saw it as "well, I've got more to do...").  I have to admit, though every project I've ever been involved with gets complicated for reasons that are outside of my control, this project has seemed like a can-of-worms at almost all turns.  I guess that means that I'm learning a lot (which makes me happy), so this is how I replied to my pessimistic co-worker.  =D

Hilary, I haven't yet gotten the approval I need from my supervisor to post the video, so hopefully that will happen next week.  I'll "do it up special" so that it has more footage and better explanations than the other one too!  lol, far be it from me to just "get'r'done".  I guess I use a lot of quotes these days, but "it is what is!"

I can share some things from work.  This last week, I was working on troubleshooting an amplifier and realized that the major problem was not with the amplifier at all (it was due to a  component in my model that was doing exactly what i told it to do).  I was thinking how funny that is that when things aren't going right, we sometimes don't look at ourselves as the culprit until there are no more "outside" places to point at.  Kind of a get-the-spec-out-of-your-own-eye thing (or maybe a you-shouldn't-use-so-many-dashes-thing).

Anyway, after that round of toubleshooting, I had several conclusions.  first that since my system operates at a fixed frequency (somewhere between 4000 and 8000 cycles/second) and the signals i'm generating can range up to rather high frequencies themselves (92 cycles/second under normal conditions and possibly up to 1000 cycles/second) this means that the number of "points" that my system is generating get kinda sparse in the output waveform.  Here's an example.  If I want to generate a nice clean waveform, I'll use a lot of points (500) along it so that is is approximately smooth.

a plot like the one above would happen if we were using a 4000 cycles/second signal generator to generate an 8 cycles/second waveform (4000/8 = 500).  But since my system is generating signals at a fixed rate (approximately 4000 cycles/sec), as we increase the waveform frequency, our points/cycle decreases.  below is a plot of 100 points/cycle.

Notice the "stair-step" like appearance.  This is because we have fewer points, and in-between points the signal generator does not update it output value.  If we push this further to 43 points/cycle (below) we see that the signal is looking less and less smooth.

This is the problem I am running into (one of them at least).  Since my signal is not smooth at higher frequencies, I need to smooth it out after I generate it.  This is done with what is called a "low-pass" filter (which means that it only lets the low frequencies pass through it and attenuates the higher frequencies).  In the picture below I have made a cool Simulink model (part of MATLAB) which does two things: it generates exactly the same signal as my data system (my data system was prorammed using the same code), and then it simulates what effect a proposed analog low-pass filter would have on that generated signal.

Here is the plot this model produced (below)

See how nice and smooth the red is?  very nice!  =D  So I've been playing a little with that today, trying to find a reasonble filter design to handle my needs (the output amplitudes are similar, as in this one, but also the phase shift can't be too much, notice how in this one the red output signal is shifted to the right...)

Yeah, so that's what I've been working on lately.  There are some other cool things that I've been playing with, but I'll save 'em for later.  In other news, I have been thinking a lot about a new truck!  It has been awhile since I have really seriously considered buying a new vehicle, but things are at a points where it seems reasonble.  I have been doing some research on it (that is what I do, I guess), and come up with the following spec that i'm looking for: 2007 chevy silverado extended cab, 1/2-ton, supersport, lifted with 35x12.50 tires and nice alloy wheels.  With a little snooping around on the net, I found a picture of *almost* exactly what I'm looking for...   :P

Wow, that's pretty, eh!  So I've been pursuing that a little and watching some different ads to see if I come across anything interesting.  It is so strange to actually have some money to think about these things, I'm really not used to having any money!  :P

On the topic of money, I've also been thinking about a killer workstation laptop.  This isn't a popular idea with any of my advisors, but man, how sweet would it be!  For those of you that are into the techy stuff, I'm thinking about a Lenovo W701, 2GHz, 16GB RAM, 256GB ss hard drive, 1TB secondary, 17" uwxga display (FHD, LED backlit), blu-ray burner onboard, Quadro 3800 video card with 1TB of memory.  Pretty much maxing everything out the way I like it there.  Of course, the major problem is that it is so stinkin' expensive.  Ah well, for the moment, dreaming is free...

On another front altogether, I have made  some great strides in my eating habits this last week.

This here picture is a sandwich I made for myself at lunch.  Now, mind you, making food is not all that difficult a task, so I'm not expecting a bouquet of roses, but for some reason I have something of a mental block about making my lunches, cooking at home, etc.  this week I only eat out twice; both times because I needed something to eat for lunch and I didn't have time to make it the night before or the morning of.  Other than that, this week has been completely "homemade."  Yay!!  ...and there was great rejoicing!

There is often more going on that I can't blog about, but there is a similar phenomenon that there is more blogged about than you are interested in, so I think it balances itself out.  I'm missing all you friends and family out there, but I'm trying to be content in my situation and take full advantage of it.

Oh, one other thing.  I almost forgot to tell you...  I have changed a little!  See if you can find the difference in these next too pictures (queue the music, "one of these pictures is not like the other")

And of course, my post wouldn't be complete without mentioning that I've been having a great time with my girlfriend Elisa.  This pic was taken before we went out to eat a few weeks ago... it's funny, the stairs do a tolerable job of holding the camera, but I still can't get them to take it where I look as good as she does!  Oh well, I guess I'll just keep workin' on my guns and hope for the best!  =P

Adieu!

As usual, after the disorder, the post...

At the behest of my younger (and wiser) sister, I come to you again.  It has indeed been quite a while since I've updated the old bloggy, but a fair amount has transpired since the last time, so an update I will post.

Back a while now (Sometime in late Feb, early April) I started dating a girl from Santa Rosa...

Her name is Elisa, and I kinda like her (just a little bit though)  =)

We both like exercising, and sometimes we help each other out...

Lol.  Sorry, I had to post this one.  It's funny cause if I claim to be strong, then I'm implying she's heavy (which she isn't), but if I claim she's light, then I have no claim to strenth (and who would want to claim that!!)...  hahaha.  What a fun way to workout!  =)

Strength and weight aside, we have a great time together.  This last weekend, (July 4th weekend) I had the pleasure of spending 4 days with Elisa and her family at their place in Tahoe, which was lots of fun.  Unfortunately, I completely forgot my camera, so I don't have any pics of the trip to post...  = (   fortunately, there were other cameras there, so hopefully I'll be able to get my paws on those later, but for the moment, they are memories that are only in my head.  We spent some time floating around on rafts near the dock, took some bike rides around the area and even got some reading done (fractals, baby!  I really should get some fiction books though).

At work, I am steadily moving closer to finishing my thesis.  I have moved past the theory and have been elbow deep in bench testing various circuit and hardware.   Here are some pics of the various tests that I've been workin' on...

(I need to check and make sure the picture can be posted)

This pic (above) is my test setup of an isolation circuit that I designed...  and it works!  =)  that's always a good thing, don't you think?  This little darling let's you connect with something that is "floating" 1500V above or below where you are, and not damage either side...  kinda cool actually.  And it accomplishes all this magic optically (Light Emitting Diodes to send the signal (LEDs) and Photo-Detector Diodes to recieve it (PDDs)).

This next circuit is my most current setup.  It is kinda gettin' crowded on the  bench, eh?  ;) 

(I need to check and make sure the picture can be posted)

This setup is allowing me to pump some power through resistors (located on the shiny heatsink in the middle) and some capacitors (inside the black box, so they don't blow up in my face).  The rack on the left is a set of instrumentaiton amplifiers, and the setup on the right is the power supplies, the power amplifier, and my isolation circuit in the shiny aluminum case.  This test was to find out how "well-behaved" the power supplies and amplifier really are.

I designed the cooling setup (sort of) and simulated it to make sure that I had sufficient cooling capacity for my situation.  That makes some pretty pictures, so I'll show you one.  This is actually using muffin fans instead of a squirel cage fan like you see in the pic above, but the same idea.

I am now nearly ready to start on the "real" data of the atual actuators and do some real experimental work.  I am hoping it goes well, and definitely hoping it goes quickly, but either way, I'm sure I'll learn a lot.

So....  Who cares, right?  what's "really" going on in my life besides girlfirend and work.  To be honest those two things take an inordinate amount of time.  Not time that I begrudge, but still...  lots of time.  In related news, I did upgrade to a new phone.  I got one of 'em fancy phones, the Motorola "Droid."  That has been fun, downloading all sorts of silly little apps like a "soundboard" of quotes from Zoolander or Charlie the Unicorn.  Also, more serious apps like the Star Trek soundboard.  Now, whenever some emails or texts me, I am greeted with a cool little computer beep followed by Spock saying, "Captain, incoming message."  lol.  gotta love Star Trek, right?  Then there are the somewhat useless but fun to show off apps like Google Goggles which are very handy for identifying things that you already know that they are (it can read bar codes and occasionally gets a painting right).  I'm not meaning to sound negative at all.  There are some really useful apps, like the map app, which uses GPS and can get me whereever I need to go and the browser app which lets me surf the web and figure stuff out without my computer.  Yeah, gadgets are good.

Garrett, you will be happy to learn that i have not increased my bench lately, but I have started do dumbell press (inclined and standard) and liftin' some hefty bells.  That's what reall worker-outers call 'em...  Bells.  =)  Didja see what I did there?  I left off the "dumb," cause, well it doesn't sound as cool.  Right.

Nate, you will be happy to know that I have now gone on a 22 mile  bike trip (Tahoe to Squaw Valley and back).  Man, you really don't realize which muslces are gonna be sore! But I wasn't feelin' too bad afterward, I definitely needed a little break though!  :)

Mom, I'm trying to eat healthier, and I think to a large extent I am succeeding.  I have gotten completely burnt out on Arby's...  so that kinda helps in a wierd way.  =)

Ash, thanks for the reminder to keep this little beauty up to date.  I fully intend to, but sometimes I don't accomplish my intentions.  =)  thanks for the update on you blog as well, I read it and it was very nice

Just a quick aside, I had vanilla pudding tonight for dinner.  I usually skip dinner, so it was just a fun treat.  Don't worry, 2% milk, and sugar free pudding, so I can maintain my feminine figure.  lol.

Hm.....  What else to say...   I guess that's pretty good for now.  As always, I will try to be more consistent with my blog updates.  There are times (as everyone knows) that my life just doesn't seem all that interesting to the outside world from my perspective, but I'll give you a boring post now and again, just to make sure you've had your "Gavin Fix" for the period.  ;)

With that, I bid you adieu.  Family and friends, I love and miss you guys.  When I left, I was but a cabin boy; when I return, I will be a cabin man.

Yours very truly,

Gavin

P.s.  just for fun... a little video that I captured on my camera.  Don't show it to the police...  hahaha  I was bored (back in March sometime) and was playing with the video options on my phone.  This little drive is where I often go to grab groceries, chinese, pizza and movies.  (not all at the same time usually though).  I really am a safe driver, I swear!  lol

P.p.s. these videos take forever to upload!

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

New Camera!!! Hoo-rah!

What a lovely Friday this is!  Well, in order to motivate myself to blog a bit more often, I decided that I need a better tool for describing my life...  a shiny new camera!  For those of you who are curious about the specs, it is a canon SD3500 "point and shoot" type of camera (14MP, 5x optical zoom, IS, 720P movie mode).

I am very impressed with this little camera.  Sure, it isn't near as fast as my Rebel, but I can't fit the rebel in my pocket either!  :)  on top of that, this camera has a very cool feature: the back of the thing has no buttons... only a 3.5" touchscreen!  wow... i was gambling with this one to see if i'd like it.  So far, I'm very impressed.  I had assumed that the low light performance would be marginal, but as you'll see from these first shots, it doesn't do too badly at all (our whole house is low light 'cause we're too cheap to buy more lights).  This is a typical evening in our newly-chair-populated living room.  Cousin Scott is relaxing in one of the all-American lounge chairs. 

And here is our kitchen.  This shot is looking the other way in the house.  See?  we now have a table!  What a huge difference that makes!  My room is down at the end of the hall...  Scott's room is halfway down the hall, then up the stairs on the left.

So, if you go all the way down the hall and poke your head into my room, this is what you'll find.  Lot's of whiteboards and lots of books!  The window actually looks out on a rather nice scene, but since it is now dark, you really can't appreciate it in a picture tonight.

Finally, we have a great shot at the spaniard himself, Scott-E.  The man is getting ready to go to bed.  We were going to go to the movies tonight, but I flaked out.  This week has been crazy busy.

So I guess that's it for the pics.  I shot a funny video with Scott too, but I don't have a quick way to get that onto the blog right now since it's in HiDef.  As far as other updates go, I'm officially registered for graduation (Thank you Mom!!!)  and my grad clearance form should now pass muster as I added a one-unit course to fulfill the 30 units necessary for graduation...  I'm gonna work on a DSP algorithm to do object tracking, which should be a lot of fun.  Maybe I can post some of the cool tracking footage on here so you guys can get a glimpse of "the light."  And, just in case there was any doubt, when I say "the light" I mean the fun business of DSP and digitial signal analysis...  gotta luv 'em! :P

Ok.  Well I think we're back up to speed.  Oh, btw, my thesis is going well and I now have 8 weeks to turn it in.  It should be noted at this point that I have 0 pages written.  Time to start crankin' i think!  Take care.  Gavin out.

***** Late Breaking Update  ******

I did find a quick way to get the video up here... the built in windows video editor... and now without further ado, I give you scottE!!  

-----

okay, well that ended up being a dud.  for some reason the upload video button has disappeared from my little WYSIWYG toolbar here in the editor.  what a bummer.  I'm sure I'll figure it out later.  Have a good night, peeps.  --Gav

Southbay state of the union

Howdy y'all.  I think my blog is the only place that I have a twang and a southern drawl, but I'm reachin' for country when I'm living in the city!  I promised a few weeks ago to post some pictures of the new place, and I would like to say that I've made progress toward that, but alas I have not.  My phone (which doesn't take particularly good pictures anyway) is not working quite right, so I am without device here in silicon valley.  The ironies never end, do they.

I suppose on the bright side, if I were to post pictures, you would just be looking at bare walls, sparse living room, and a generally spartan, bachelor existence anyhow.  But all that is about to change (queue the mysterious music for dramatic foreshadowing).  I am in the processing of reinventing Gavin.  This old dog is gonna learn some new tricks, and break some old habits in the process.

For example, those of you that know me pretty well, know that I was a huge proponent of mac'n'cheese in my former bachelor ways...  but not anymore.  I BOUGHT LETTUCE.  Why is lettuce so important you ask?  Because lettuce symbolizes the type of food that you buy at the store that really only works with moderately healthy to very healthy meals.  Lettuce is something that is very perishable, which means I'm not just planning to eat it, I'm planning to eat it soon (no, I haven't eaten it yet, but I would have had it with my sandwich on Sunday had it been in my posession).  So, in summary there, I've have taken the lettuce step.  I big step for Gavin-kind.

I am seriously considering buying a slick little point-and-shoot camera to capture some of the fun things goin on around here.  I wish I would have had it earlier tonight: Scott and i took a little drive down Washington st. to a basketball court there.  We shot around and played horse, it was fun.  (I won, muwahahahahah).  But it was cool of him to let me play coach a little bit and help him with his shooting form.  Once a coach, always a coach I guess.  I was actually very impressed with the court: it has really good lighting, not bad backboards and rims for a playgound-style court, and the court is nicely surfaced/leveled for playing.  It's not half-bad!  :P

In my workplace, I've been trying to finish a security/background check set of paperwork.  What a pain that is.  I think i finally finished everything today.  Those things scare me, when the have plastered reminders all over the forms how they can sue you for $10k or send you to prison for 5 years if you get something wrong.  I did my best, hopefully I don't have to go to prison...  In some ways it's kinda fun: I had to call up a lot of the people I used to work with/for.  It's kinda cool to hear how they're doing, I was glad to hear that one place in particular was happy with a database i setup for them 8 years ago or so.  Cool peeps.

On the workout front, I got myself in gear and got a membership to Gold's Gym.  It's very inexpensive here (like $15/mo) and the facilities are pretty good.  I'm trying to go early in the morning, so that helps me go to bed earlier too.  Wow, it's already 10:50pm... I gotta get there at 6am...  I'm gonna "do the math" in my head here and say that I should probably stop writing and get some sleep.

I hope that all of my loyal readership are doing well (wow -> that sounds so impersonal, eh?)  I mean the people that care about me enough to read my text-only blog about my adventures here.  I love you guys.  But all good things must come to an end (I don't really know why there), so I'll keep my date with mr sandman.  He keeps wanting to go steady, I keep telling him that I have to get up...  our relationship is a work-in-progress.  Oh yeah!  really quick!  I don't know if I've mentioned this here or not (i think not).  I was talking to Scott and he asked me if I was a night owl (since it does seem to be my tendency to go to bed late and it does not seem to be my tendency to wake up early when I don't have to)...  I told him that it's not that I'm a night owl, I like the morning and the evening, it's just that I am transition challenged!  Think about it!!  I think that may be the difference between "night owls" and "early birds", the early people have less inertia to transition to the new state while the late people always lag behind and it takes time for them to transition into the new state.  (yeah, I'm gonna publish this theory in my thesis for sure).

Well, without further ado, I bid you all good night!  Gavin is leaving this waking world, in favor of it's nocturnal reflection...

Back at NASA! --> Round two. Fight!

Howdy there!  Well, I'm back in Mountain View, CA at NASA/Ames center working on finishing my thesis.  Hopefully it will be a quality piece of work.  I am signed up through May, but the lease on my apartment goes through the middle of July... after that, I don't know quite where I'll be.

So, what do you say?  Am I now the city slicker?  I don't think of myself that way, but in the last few days I've been pondering what that means...  there is something to be said for having all kinds of consumer items at your fingertips!  Then again, at the moment it seems like people are stacked in here so tight they may not be able to enjoy the "perks". 

I had really hoped to post some pictures of my first few days in Mountain View, so without further ado...

here is a great shot of the Best Western that housed me for the first two nights.  very exciting. (!)

And next we have the super comfy, Comfort Inn.  This is where I'll be staying for the next 2 days.  (!?)

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, "Gavin, why are you such a complainer?!"  "But wait," I interject, "there's more!"  As it turns out, I cannot charge my phone because of a mixup with the adapters I brought.  I have been trying to buy a new one for the last two days, and as yet have been unsuccessful.  But today was close, I came only 5 minutes after VZW closed.  (!)

Firstly, you might think I'm whining right now.  But no, I am relating the simple frustrations of a few days in the city.  My first day at work went really well (actually, one might not have known I was gone, my desk was just like I left it) and it felt like routine before I even got to my office.  I don't know if that is a good thing or not, but that is what it is.  Dad, you will be happy to know that I wore that ENE hoody today, and got several comments on it...  (they were positive)  ;)

My apartment will be ready to go in a few days, so I really can't complain too much, and I am blessed to have found a great place.  The rent is higher than Chico, but it's not bad for Mountain View.  I'll post some pics of the new place when I get over there on Wednesday.  In the meantime, know that I am well, tired, pondering and inconsolable.  (Smiling most of the time, but I miss my family)... Hey Garrett, is this what Hawaii felt like?

Missing all you guys...  =)  Any ideas for what I ought to do this weekend?  Maybe sleep would be good, but how can you sleep on the weekends?!?!?!?!  No, we must party!  (okay, at least go have some fun).

-City Slicker out