What I See...

As a tech savvy person, I have had the Kindle on my radar since it’s induction. However, one of the biggest limitation of Kindle; the lack of ability to render math equations from text books and engineering related research papers. This disadvantage is also common on many other E-ink based readers, such as: Sony, BN etc… Also, the idea of spending $90+ on a Kindle, after owning the iPad2 (with it been more multi-purpose), just doesn’t seem like it’s worth the money.

However, last week Walmart was nice enough to ran a one week offer. “Buy an $79 Kindle and get a $30 gift card in return”, now that sounds like a deal for me and indeed I went down to Walmart and got one, the last one at the store as well.

So, one of the biggest reason I got the Kindle other than the price and if you have been reading my post, is that I have started to get into Space History/NASA history related documentaries.

[It’s been almost two weeks since I started to draft this post]…

My view of Kindle has only improved over the last couple of weeks. I have also discovered immanence amount of free amazon classic literature. Yes, the same literature that I thought was stupid or useless to read while back in high school. Then again, most of us back in high school are only care enough to get into the college and the major that we want. Anyways, Kindle is a great device as long as your goal is to read books, if you read more math/science oriented paper (with equations) I’d suggest you to stay away from it.

So, one of my work horse and oldest computer (besides the Powerbook G4 from 2004), is my Mac Mini early 2009. The Mini has been the primary machine during the better part of my graduate student’s life, and sadly with the new Lion OS it has been getting slower. However, I just found out that despite Apple’s official maximum memory capacity for the Mini, it is actually able to handle a 8Gb vs. what is the believed the 4Gb stated by Apple, yay! 

When I purchased the Mini, I had customized it to have the maximum 4Gb already. That’s after learning how painful it is to upgrade these early version of Mac’s, and that goes for the hard drive upgrade for the PB G4 as well. So yes, I consider it a good find to learn that I can put up to 8Gb in it, I’m thinking to also upgrade the hard drive and the fan. Considering how annoying it is to open the Mini up, I might as well take care of everything at once.

Update: Alright, just bit the bullet and got the memory and the hard drive. Figure I would get it before the price went up again. I’ll work on the fan later…

Update 2: So thanks to amazon prime, the hard drive and memory arrived within two days of order (I’ll be on travel soon so I wanted to get this done before I leave). Anyways, thanks to some online Mac Mini guide I have successfully maximized the RAM, replaced it with a much larger hard drive into the Mini. So as far as performance is concerned, the one last thing I could do is switch to SSD, but considering the volume/price ratio, I think I’ll hold off on that. However, after this experience, I realized that the early Mini is not that hard to work with, so should the fan or cd-rom stops working, I think I know what to do now!

So on top of collecting any technical books related to my field of study, I’ll also start to read/collect the history of it. So, I just got a couple books from a book sale.

“First Man The life of Neil A. Armstrong” - Hansen

“at the edge of space, the X-15 flight program” - Thompson

I’ll get around to it when I’m free.

The New York Times, Guide to the Return of Halley’s Comet. 1985 by Richard Flaste et al. Again, by looking at the publication date this is another old book that I have managed to collect and put away over the years. One of the interesting thing while I was reading this book, is that it was only half way through the book did I realize this book was published in anticipation of Halley’s return of 1986. I suppose back in 1985, this book is could be another one of those business scheme like Valentine’s Day. Except, of course, you can only do it every 76 years. 

I not sure if I want to spend too much time talking about the book. Not because I don’t think it’s a good book. But I simply doubt that anybody will be able to get their hands on this book, considering it was 27 years ago when the book was published.

However, one of the things I thought about while reading this book, is how would The New York Times (should they exist at the year ~2061), and be willing to publish another “Return of Halley’s Comet”, describe our time? Or our Century? Back in 1985, the perspective of this book was focused around 1909, roughly the turn of the 20th century. The book, spent a great deal of time focusing on the scientific development and people’s general reaction toward Halley’s Comet of that period. 

I’m almost certain, that the author will again attempting to convey the general lack of knowledge and people’s fear of the 1909 period. Also, attempt to add a few new discoveries about the comet, solar system and universe in general. However, would people in 2061 still find as much relevancy toward the people in 1909 as we would be in 1985? Maybe they would simply consider them as people of the ancient time, and joke about the general lack of technology.

I doubt I’ll be around when 2061 rolls around, but if I am I’ll make sure to put a copy of the book in my future amazon super digital cart!

As a student in the field of space engineering, I think it’s a given to say that you should know your technical stuff. But at the same time, I realized that it is almost as useful and motivational to read up on the history of astronomy and space exploration. For the last couple weeks, I have been reading “Where No Man has Gone Before” - The NASA history series by William Compton. Like many of the books I have collected over the year, most of them have been in storage boxes. I have only recently started to rediscover them one by one.

I’m about 20 precent through the book, so far the book has been “eventful”. In the sense that the newly formed NASA back in the 60’s was disorganized and the first couple chapters made good effort in trying to account for all the organizations created at the time. It was a bit overwhelming and tedious as a reader trying to keep track of all the organizations, but I suppose history is history. It was also interesting to learn that as big of an accomplishment as landing and walking on the moon, many of the head scientist was against the Apollo mission at the time. Citing that giving the same amount of money (or possible much less), any unmanned mission would have generated much more scientific result. Anyways, I will keep up with the dates as I progress.

Alright, I have decided to make this into more of my outlet and keep track of my education progress. I have been trying a couple of new things and made a few progress but not exactly in the direction I would like to. So, in the up coming year I set a few goals to achieve.

1. To pass the Ph.D exam.

2. Perform literature review and write summery of any papers in my field of research.

3. Get in touch with mentor to start making some result.

4. Getting back to finish taking the rest of the classes required for the degree.

Also, I want to use this place as a space diary, talk about the thing I read news, history etc…

Of course, the things listed above have different deadlines. But I suppose I’ll make sure I progress accordingly.