So much biking! After 500 Mile May, I decided to start tracking all of my biking. I just kept a big Google doc full of all of the miles I did; it was actually pretty easy.

Most of the biking I do on my own bike is the same route back and forth from home to the metro station, then most of my biking within DC is on Capital Bikeshare, and they made it very easy to monitor how much I bike. I just had to stay on top of mapping my routes shortly after, so I'd remember and could log the miles.

How many miles? At least 1733 miles, probably about 2000. I only started tracking in May, so I can't say with any certainty about January through April, but based on the rest of my months, 2000 is probably accurate:

Obviously with my goal of 500 miles for May, that was the big month. After that, DC summer got disgusting, so I didn't make it quite as much. I also kept track of what how many miles I did on each bike; my own bike, CaBi, and any other bike lumped into 'other'.

Read more...

As I've done for the last 2 years, I've obsessively tracked my book reading with Goodreads. Guess what? Even more books! I aimed for 100 books, and made 108. Even if you discount 3-5 graphic novels (depending on definition), I made it, huzzah!

Following roughly the same format as years past, here they are; title, author, rating, and strong recommendations in bold.

January - 12

American Gods [Neil Gaiman] (4/5)
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe [Charles Yu] (5/5)
Global Frequency Vol. 1: Planet Ablaze [Warren Ellis] (4/5)
Global Frequency Vol. 2: Detonation Radio [Warren Ellis] (5/5)
The City & The City [China Miéville] (5/5)
The Comedy of Errors [Shakespeare] (4/5)
Death Without Company [Craig Johnson] (5/5)
Henry VIII [Shakespeare] (4/5)
Eunoia [Christian Bok] (5/5)
Edenborn [Nick Sagan] (4/5)
The Nitrogen Fix [Hal Clement] (2/5)
To Kill a Mockingbird [Harper Lee] (5/5)

February - 5

Halting State [Charles Stross] (4/5)
The Sirens of Titan [Kurt Vonnegut] (4/5)
Everfree [Nick Sagan] (4/5)
The Truth [Terry Pratchett] (5/5)
Ringworld [Larry Niven] (5/5)

March - 9

A Short History of Nearly Everything [Bill Bryson] (5/5)
The Mountains of Mourning [Lois McMaster Bujold] (4/5)
The Warrior's Apprentice [Lois McMaster Bujold] (5/5)
Our Lady of Darkness [Fritz Leiber] (2/5)
The Vor Game [Lois McMaster Bujold] (4/5)
Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror [Jeffrey Goldberg] (5/5)
Molecules and Medicine [E.J. Corey] (3/5)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency [Douglas Adams] (4/5)
The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul [Douglas Adams] (4/5)

Read more...

I have 47 pending interlibrary loans requests. My apologies, librarians.

Inputting all of those took forever. But not nearly as long as it will take them to find any of those articles. Thanks! (I hope!)

Article not found
Maybe cause it's in Russian...
...and from the fourties

Godspeed.

I just finished reading Ape House (which was excellent), and my immediate reaction was of course, "¡me encantan los monos!" But wait, mono is monkey. Apes are not monkeys. (Yes, yes, Linnean taxonomy is bad, but I'm sticking with that last statement nonetheless.)

As you see, Google translates ape into mono. But putting in mono translates to monkey. Ah-ha, but simio there at the bottom looks promising, and indeed means ape. Not sure why, but this translation was hard to find.

The more you know.

Simio, mono
Me encantan los dos. ¡Si!
Que divertida

Godspeed.

I'm working on developing some single-crystal to crystal transformations, and to help me visualize some of the more complicated unit cells and crystal structures, I was recommended a program called VESTA. Imagine my surprise to see this:

Geocities!? First off, I thought they died off. Yes, it closed more than two years ago, but Geocities Japan is still active (the only one, in fact) and sure enough, geocities.jp.

Secondly, it looks like a decent site. Isn't it a rule that all Geocities sites have to be filled with blinking text and animated gifs?

No pink comic sans?
No autoplaying music?
How is this legit?

Godspeed.

Scenes from a Multiverse is pretty great.

Yes, sciencemaster
Better term than scientist
Mmm mexican food

Godspeed.

I made gingerbread for the first time. I've made a house before, but just out of a pre-made kit. Now to decide what to make...

Can it snow yet, please?
Need lab shaped cookie cutters
Want to go carol

Godspeed.

I have nothing specific to say, but it's been a while, so here's some jumbled incoherence for you.

Despite the destruction of Reader sharing as I knew it, I'm sticking with it for now, and for the first time in weeks, this little icon says something other than 1000+:

Lab has been super busy, but stuff is working... maybe. Frustratingly close to being ready to publish on a couple things. Soon... Been spending some time up at NIST, which is fun, as well as JHU. I apparently really like commuting even longer than usual.

Been going to a bunch of shows recently. Most hilarious was Melt-Banana, which can be summed up by their picture:

I made some more key lime pie recently. Mmmm... Also, grilled lots of meat last night:

Definitely time for another big BBQ and/or bacon party soon.

Been getting into lab earlier than usual, and have been drinking even more coffee than usual as a result. In related issues, almost out of coffee from Costa Rica. Does NSF have emergency funds for these kind of situations?

Like HP, I've finally abandoned WebOS, and my Palm Pre, and have joined the Android world. Swype is fun. Very gratifying to have it guess my words right. Some words are really fun, like banana.

Everything is excellent.

Miscellania
Posting for the sake of it
Time for more coffee

Godspeed.

Dear Hackers,

I hope you're having fun. Not to disappoint you, but you're not the first. I'm aware this site is easily hackable, I've written all of the code by hand, and I'm no expert in security. I really know next to nothing about how to hack-proof the site.

I'm also not going to try; I play with the code for this site when I have the free time and feel compelled to. Those two things rarely coincide; graduate school seems to take up quite a bit of time. You're welcome to keep messing with Will and Beyond, and for a while, I'll keep putting forth efforts to restore it. At some point, one of us will get bored and give up. Hopefully, it will be you, as I enjoy having this, but if you really feel this devoted, you'll probably win out.

That's it, toodles for now. For everyone else, you've probably seen the couple posts left recently, if not, here are the screenshots:

Hugs and kisses,
Will

Kind of amusing
A little bit frustrating
But who will bore first?

Godspeed.

Bacon bits mixed into pancake batter.

Grilled greased with bacon fat.

Delicious.

Needs bacon butter
And infused bacon syrup
Topped with bacon bits

Godspeed.