T-givins...

I opted out of the Sokolic–Kimberley thanksgiving feast this year as it was taking place in Cali and I was not wanting to deal with traveling on such a crazy weekend. I figured that I could provide a pretty good spread for some friends with the cash I would have dropped on a plane ticket. Most peeps had gone home to be with family, but I was able to muster up a few stragglers to partake in the feast. Nitin brought the traditional green bean casserole which was good seeing as it was Buyang and Jian's first time having Thanksgiving dinner. Tronica (AKA: Monica, Tron, Knockout Rose, or Tina Fey) and Ryan brought some taters and homemade cranberry sauce to round out the fixins. I cooked the bird and a few sides.

Da Bird

Ryan dishing some soup

After dinner and dessert bChan and Dylan (AKA Axel) stopped by. These are friends from UofI that have recently relocated to Philly. Becky has family just west of B-more and they were able to swing by for some pumpkin cheescake at the end of the night. It was really great to catch up with them as I has been about a year since we had last met up. Dylan is thinking about joining the ranks of LSV which would be a lot of fun. It has been several years since we raced together.

Anyhoo, Thanksgiving officially marks the start of the season for me. I've actually ridden two days in a row, and am planning on a third. Expect to see some more regular posts here as cold lonely winter rides are my muse. The stupidity shall flow.

Maf can be purty...

While I'm trained as an experimental scientist/engineer, and have a visceral rejection of pure mathematics, every now and again something worthwhile (in my narrow view of math) appears. Actually as I've touched on before I don't think I have the capacity to have a visceral reaction to anything as my logical side generally overwhelms more low level reactions, but I digress.

While cruising /. I stumbled upon this interesting bit on the search for a 3D Mandelbrot set. A 2D Mandelbrot set leads to pretty stunning images that have a fractal nature, and the 3D "equivalent" is pretty mind blowing. the overarching basic concept of a fractal is that is comprised of smaller building blocks that are of the same form, this is self-similarity. This patterning holds at any scale so as you "zoom in" the structure is maintained. A classic example is the Sierpinski triangle.

The Mandelbrot set is a more complex fractal, and someone has tried to create a 3D analog. This is what it looks like:

While this is a pretty interesting looking "thing", it gets better as you zoom in:

Checkout the rest of the site to see some other really cool images that are found by zooming in on different parts of the rendering.

I Know that dude...

While flipping through images of SSCXWC 2009 I found myself saying "I know that dude" in my best Jeff Spicoli impression when I saw this image.


That is the one and only Dirty Mike dead center with the bills stuffed in his undies. Glad to see that my old crew is keeping it real. There are some really good shots at CXmag so be sure to check them out.

Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles (or lack thereof)...

Yet another Beatles song graces my blog with its presence, the title is a lyric from "Hey Bulldog". As you may guess from the title I've been enjoying my lack of miles. Lots of social events, and all around good times. Tank bought a house a few weeks back and we spent the better part of two weeks gutting the place down to brick and studs. He's finally started to frame the place out and I think I'll try to get down there to lend a hand again. There is a certain satisfaction that comes form partaking in a task that involves manual labor. At the end of the day you can often see a measurable change in the state of the project. This is a pleasing contrast to my work life where I can labor for a week and not have a damn thing to show.

I'll be getting back to riding soon as we have our first team meeting on Oct. 31st. We've got a few new riders, but the bulk of the crew for 09 is returning. It's gonna be a good year.