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Two days ago I finally decided to try out this new audio broadcast format: Podcasting. It's basically a simplified way of downloading packets of audio and listening to them on your hard drive (or iPod, which I lack). So, the first thing I did was download the latest Science@NASA, Stardate, and Science Friday podcasts. Plus, I found a sweet radio program out of one of the UC schools, This Week in Science. The internet is amazing! BTW, there are also programs on all other kinds of subjects, including a Podcast on Tatoos and Body Mods, sweet eh?
I am doing something interesting tomorrow. I'm driving down to OSU to visit their Astronomy department at the urging of the Astro prof. that I'm writing a couple of papers with. I had not really strongly been considering a career in Astronomy lately, but now in advance of this visit I'm getting quite excited about the idea. I could try to find the nature of dark matter and dark energy, understand whether or not the physical constants (Speed of light, etc.) have been constant through time, built gigantic models of galaxy formation, developed new instruments (synergy w/ mech. eng.), research planet formation (synergy w/ geology), or do something like Steve Squyers my current science hero (synergy w/ both mech. eng. and geology).
If it seems painful to read my uncertain posts about a future career, just imagine being in my position. I spend at least an hour a day worrying about this stuff, and my advisor is really no help; I went to him last week to talk about some of these things, and how I was really considering a career not in Hydrology, and he floated a totally amazing PhD project idea to me. Basically, I would build a groundwater and surface water model of the entire great lakes basin at a resolution previously unattempted. And, I would link it to a Regional Atmospheric Model. This would all require massive parallel computing capabilities on 64-bit machines...anyway it's enough to make a computer nerd such as myself grunt like Tim Allen on Home Improvement.
Ah well, I've got a few days left to prepare a poster for a conference down in New Orleans next week, and then Cheryl and I are going to visit Tom and Ari out in Niagara Falls over the Memorial Day weekend. After that...summertime! Woohoo! But for now, non-stop research and drawing (I've been spending a large amount of time drawing little houses and cornstalks in Adobe Illustrator, I'll have to post the final drawing).
I am doing something interesting tomorrow. I'm driving down to OSU to visit their Astronomy department at the urging of the Astro prof. that I'm writing a couple of papers with. I had not really strongly been considering a career in Astronomy lately, but now in advance of this visit I'm getting quite excited about the idea. I could try to find the nature of dark matter and dark energy, understand whether or not the physical constants (Speed of light, etc.) have been constant through time, built gigantic models of galaxy formation, developed new instruments (synergy w/ mech. eng.), research planet formation (synergy w/ geology), or do something like Steve Squyers my current science hero (synergy w/ both mech. eng. and geology).
If it seems painful to read my uncertain posts about a future career, just imagine being in my position. I spend at least an hour a day worrying about this stuff, and my advisor is really no help; I went to him last week to talk about some of these things, and how I was really considering a career not in Hydrology, and he floated a totally amazing PhD project idea to me. Basically, I would build a groundwater and surface water model of the entire great lakes basin at a resolution previously unattempted. And, I would link it to a Regional Atmospheric Model. This would all require massive parallel computing capabilities on 64-bit machines...anyway it's enough to make a computer nerd such as myself grunt like Tim Allen on Home Improvement.
Ah well, I've got a few days left to prepare a poster for a conference down in New Orleans next week, and then Cheryl and I are going to visit Tom and Ari out in Niagara Falls over the Memorial Day weekend. After that...summertime! Woohoo! But for now, non-stop research and drawing (I've been spending a large amount of time drawing little houses and cornstalks in Adobe Illustrator, I'll have to post the final drawing).