Well, this is my first post after lurking around for quite some time. HERE you go acosta, shollen. My top 13 albums of 2005.

Dear Andrew Killian Fischer,
I’m sorry but The Evens and Sigur Ros are still on here.

1 Andrew Bird - And the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Strings and a voice like a roofie. What happened? “Masterfade” and “Fake Palindromes” along with almost all the other songs on this masterpiece monopolized the mix cd’s made this year. I hear he’s popular with the ladies as well. What a dreamboat.

2 Thunderbirds are Now! - Justamustache
Spelling out your band’s name is just adorable. Almost too adorable…almost.

3 Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
“Casimir Pulaski Day” pretty much secured this album a place as soon as I heard it.

4 The Evens - The Evens
Ian MacKaye doesn’t have to scream all the time. Watered down Fugazi? Not quite. “You Won’t Feel A Thing” has an entrancing ‘Argument’ flavor to it and “All These Governors” is just distilled pop genius. Yep.

5 Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll!
The brit-pop scene made quite a comeback this year. The clever, off the cuff lyrics aren’t too serious and they make me grin all the same. New girlfriends and handclap dance riffs on “Good Weekend”. What’s not to like.

6 Broadcast - Tender Buttons
Those ghostly female singers (Ms. John Soda, Blonde Redhead) had me in quite the headlock this year. The monotone of Broadcast echoes Ms. John Soda and Notwist while parsing down the background to a dirty Casio synth sound. “Black Cat” and “The Goodbye Girls” are simple, arresting pieces. Lyrics become almost secondary to that voice.

7 Sigur Ros - Takk
Love ‘em or hate ‘em Sigur Ros put out one standout atmospheric record this year. And it’s certainly more accessible and put together than that esoteric waster ().

8 We Versus the Shark - Ruin Everything!
Crazy math guitars! Nonsense lyrics! Shouting or perversely crooning vocals! What? It’s dynamic and repeat worthy. As good as it gets.

9 Wolf Parade - Apologies to Queen Mary
Yeah, it’s probably on everyone’s list. Yeah, it’s probably one of the only releases worth going out and buying after you have it downloaded. Yeah, “I’ll Believe in Anything” is the indisputable single of the year.

10 Tiger Bear Wolf - Tiger Bear Wolf
Garage guitar rock. Umm… I’d recommend playing it loudly.

11 Okkervil River - The Black Sheep Boy
All the parts work together here. Lyrics, instruments, the worried voice. Sorry, man.

12 Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
I’m getting tired. The bass on these records was always the best part. The rhythm section on “7/4 (Shoreline)” holds it down like that center stage bass riff on “Stars and Sons”. Some of the more self indulgent filler stuff “Finish Your Collapse and Stay For Breakfast” is a bit tiresome. But I’m a forgiving man.

13 Devin Davis - Lonely People of the World Unite
Where was I when this was released? I only found this record a few weeks ago. Why not sooner? WHY! This is something you can listen to when you’re feeling a bit ‘emo’ and not be ashamed to play around the friends. I don’t get the ‘honestly?’ look HALF as much with this as I did the few fateful times Mae was in the deck.

Here it is, practically missing the month of December in all of its entirety, my promised science post. The first topic of conversation is the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was brought to my attention by a very pretty pin I received commemorating its 10,000th hour of scientific observation. Our second topic is slightly old hat, but always interesting, the MER rovers. The PI of this project gave a talk back in July of 2005 that was one of the best talks I have yet seen, titled “MER: Stealing Success from the Jaws of Failure.” And finally, I will point you in the direction of this very accessible and interesting NY times article on quantum “cat” states, which have been verified at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. Think about it for a minute, and after you read the article, come back here and read this sentence: We can’t know which state a particle is in (e.g. whether the cat is dead or alive), but we can know that it’s in two states at once; is that deterministic? And finally, if you have Griffiths’ Intro to Quantum Mechanics book, read the discussion on philosophies of quantum mechanics in Chapter 1 (I’ll add page numbers when I get back to LA). This is going very interesting places.

SPITZER (from a talk by Michael Werner, Project Scientist, 12/13/2005):

The Spitzer Space Telescope, part of the SIRTF project, was launched August 25, 2003 and is now on of the great telescopes of our time, among the Hubble Space Telescope (1993), the Chandra X-ray Observatory (1999) and the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (1991). These four telescopes pretty much cover the entire spectrum of light. As most of you know, Hubble takes data in the visible light range, and has returned some of the most stunning images of space ever seen. Chandra is in the x-ray region and is studying primarily the remnants of exploded stars. Compton covered energies from 30 keV to 30 GeV and its data spans 6 decades of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spitzer fills in the gap in the infrared range of light. IR data supplies scientists with completely different data that is complementary to that supplied by Hubble, Chandra, and Compton. The image in the upper left compares a Spitzer image to that of the same galaxy in visible light (lower left of image). Galaxies that are dim in the visible and bright in the infrared are the prime candidates for the oldest galaxies in the universe, and studying these galaxies is one of the best ways we have of trying to paste together the years of our early universe. Spitzer has found galaxies that formed 800 million years ago—earlier than we had originally thought galaxy formation was possible.

The reason that the light from the oldest galaxies in the universe would be in the IR has to do with the expansion of the universe. As a galaxy’s light started to move toward us (200-800 Myr ago), the actual fabric of space was (still is) stretching, and the light wave is literally stretched along with it. This is much like the pitch of the horn of a car changing as it moves further away from you while you stand on the side of the street (likely selling lemonade). The sound is obviously still coming toward you, but the source is moving away, so the sound wave gets stretched out (longer wavelength). Originally visible light from galaxies that started moving away from us the earliest will be the most stretched, thus in the infrared.

IR observation is also a very good way to study star formation, another important element in our spotty ‘history of the universe’ text. In particular, Spitzer is looking at polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (yes, car exhaust). Until the mid 80’s, there were unexplained anomalous bands in the IR spectrum of young stars, dubbed ‘Unidentified Infrared Bands’ (UIBs). The current hypothesis, proposed by Puget and Leger in 1989, is that these bands are in fact polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons, and this is now generally accepted. If correct, this discovery would prove that these stars are in fact prebiotic, which is a huge step towards understanding the latter stages of the stellar life cycle. I’m in way over my head, here; this is a huge topic and still very controversial. For a more complete explanation, explore this site (which actually references Mr. A. Costa’s research group because of their fancy ion trapping mechanisms), and this site, by NASA AMES.

Last bit of Spitzer science: the instruments are able to deduce the temperature of planets by waiting for them to eclipse behind their sun. This is actually just a subtraction problem: measure the IR radiation from the sun alone, wait for the planet to sneak behind it, and look for a little blip. Because of background radiation, you cannot determine this information from looking at the planet alone; there is too much noise. Spitzer has found these eclipsing planets to be ~100 K and planets in these ranges at these temperatures have no business existing–a new mystery! Of course this technique will only work when Spitzer is in the orbital plane of the eclipsing planet.

Spitzer has a finite lifetime. To do infrared photography, your instruments have to be very cold; otherwise you would be recording blackbody radiation from the hot objects all around the camera. Spitzer was launched with a 5 ½ year supply of liquid helium, and when this runs out the quality of the data will decrease tremendously as the telescope warms up. However, there is a period that the telescope will be used in its “post-cryo” stage and there is still a lot of useful data to be gotten with a warm (though still 30 K) instrument, particularly in the short IR range.

Spitzer is a very successful instrument in terms of both science and efficiency. In fact, Spitzer collects scientific data an unprecedented 65.97% of the time. The rest of the time it has to perform tasks such as downlinks to Earth, calibration, slews (changing direction), and dealing with anomalies. The priority of the data taken by the instrument is first taken from its original proposal, and then the rest of the time is competed for by anyone who wants to submit a proposal. Its schedule is planned yearly, and proposals are still being accepted. So far, it has completed a survey of the Milky Way, which –haha!—I saw pictures from that won’t be released to the public until mid January; the GLIMPSE (it’s ridiculous that I’m typing this out: the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire–not kidding); and the MIPSGAL (whose acronym is not expanded that I can see). Stay tuned, the results are awesome.

MER (from a talk by Rob Manning, Project Manager, 07/08/2005):

The Mars Explorer Rovers have been a huge success, and to a large degree, have repopularized space exploration. However, as I found when attending Manning’s talk (”Stealing Success From the Jaws of Failure”), the project was always hectic, rushed, and undergoing constant redesign. Manning is very entertaining and has a quality sense of humor; an example is the disclaimer on his first slide:

“Mistakes presented here were performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Clearance number CL#TBD)”

The original plan for MER was to mostly use a design from the 2000 proposal by Rob Manning, Mark Alder et. al for the rovers that was already in existence. Analysis concluded that this design could not be used as is and the MER team would have to completely redesign the rovers in a very short period of 30 months. Below is Manning’s comparison of the usual NASA ABCD phase flow to the MER phase flow:

4 years in Phase ABCD:
Year 1: Team gets to know, like each other and agree. (A)
Year 2: Team gets to design it. (B)
Year 3: Team gets to build it. (C)
Year 4: Team gets to test it and launch it. (D)
Post launch: Team gets to happily operate it (E)

The MER way:
Year 1: Team thinks it is designing it.(A)
Year 2: Oops. Team re-designs it. Finally agrees.(AB)
Year 3: Team gets to know each other, fabs it, build it, test it, launch it. (CD)
Post launch: Team gets to really test it. (E)
(Team really likes each other after landing successfully.)

And his “lessons learned” from the mistakes of the MER project are:

1. Volume is a real constraint
2. Even if the volume is constrained, it can always get heavier
3. It can always get more complex (wiring, programming, weight, volume)
4. Do not skip a year (complete redesign)
5. Do not take soft good for granite (failing parachutes)
6. Ignorance is not bliss (are there winds on Mars?)
7. Knives and electricity do not mix (breaking the fuse 8 weeks prior to launch)
8. Simultaneously: There is more time to solve problems than you think.
There is less time to Solve problems than you think. (surprises 30 hrs prior to launch)
9. And the final lesson: Spacecraft are built by people, not processes.
Good processes should help them succeed.

Manning concluded by saying that MER was lucky. But luck only goes so far without a team of over-dedicated scientists, technicians, and engineers–many working 80-100 hr weeks–and the strong and constant support from both NASA and JPL.

If you are interested, I have found a couple more MER stories from the project scientists here and here.

It is both amazing and not at all surprising that the MER project is so successful. Dedication has a lot to do with it, and, though scattered, the MER story is pretty inspirational–in the end, they made it happen. Both Spirit and Opportunity have now spent over an entire Martian year on the surface of the planet, taking incredible data, and helping us prepare to get there ourselves someday.

As is tradition all around the globe, the transition into a new year forces us to take a good hard look at the previous one. In that light, we here at vdov.net will be bringing you a series of top 10/5 lists for 2005. We’ll be including music, science, technology as well as some more esoteric disciplines in the listings.

There is no better way to ring in the new year than smug self-satisfaction with our collective accomplishments. We here at vdov.net will honor this tradition by ringing in the new year with lists of the best of what we know. So keep your calendars free for the next week because we are going to be dropping it like its lukewarm. To kick things off right we are going to give you Mort Mortimer, the smuggest and most self-satisified of us all (though it is all a front for vast and crippling self-loathing combined with massive penis envy). He has sullied our hard drives with his top ten albums, singles, and emo albums of 2005.

Mort’s Top 10 Albums of the Year:

Honorable Mentions: Gogol Bordello, The Cribs, Spoon

10 Wolf Parade — Apologies To Queen Mary
I can jump on any f**king bandwagon I god-damn please. Screw you.

9 The New Pornographers — Twin Cinema
I’m a sucker for Canadians who don’t speak French, and even more of a sucker for power-pop. So it’s pretty clear why I think this album is great. And given what other people have said, it seems I’m not the only one.

8 The Mountain Goats — The Sunset Tree
Had this album been an five-song EP, it would have been #3 on my list. Had it been an LP with tracks all as strong as the first five, it might have #1. It was neither of these things. But it is John Darnielle, and while he can be hit or miss, this album was mostly hits.

7 WHY? — Elephant Eyelash
I’m unclear if WHY? is indie rock, hip-hop, or folk. If someone figures it out, call me. But WHY?’s Yoni Wolf is, I’m fairly sure, just Stephen Malkmus when he’s a little sadder, a little less successful, and far more disjointed.

6 Sufjan Stevens — Illinoise
The fact that this is on my list, but not number one (or even top five)—does that give me more indie cred, or less? Regardless, it belongs here.

5 The 88 — Over and Over
Pop anthem after pop anthem after pop anthem after pop anthem after pop anthem. An album of singles, front to back. And they seem sincere, to boot.

4 Bright Eyes — I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
Bright Eyes does it best when it’s just him and his guitar, left alone in a room with only his angst. Perhaps that’s why, despite having a far cooler name with no punctuation mistakes, “Digital Ash In A Digital Urn” crashed and burned while “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” approached the heights of 2002’s “Lifted.” Let this be a lesson to you, Mr. Oberst: do what you know—you are no Postal Service.

3 The Decemberists — Picaresque
“Castaways and Cutouts” was in my top 10 in 2002. “Her Majesty” was on my top 10 in 2003. By now I’m just waiting, with sick fascination, for Colin Meloy to produce something that’s crap. In the meantime, he’s writing (again) the most inventive songs of the year. (Extra points for the only decent anti-war song to come around in quite a while.)

2 Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! — s/t
When a band debut’s with name as stupid as this, and a lead singer whose crooning can cause stray cats to go into heat, they’re usually bound either for failure or for the metal scene. But between the jarring opening and frustratingly repetitive conclusion, the Clap your Hands crew put together an absolutely amazing rock album.

1 The Hold Steady — Separation Sunday
This album goes out to all the drunks who’ve ever hit rock bottom or found God. Hence why I think it’s one of the best albums in years.

Mort’s Top 5 Singles of the Year:

5 Kanye West — “Touch the Sky”
Ah, the token Black single. Say what you will about George Bush and Black people, but “Touch the Sky” is flippin’ awesome.

4 The Go! Team — “Huddle Formation”
I’m not actually if this is a “song” so much as the singing of a bunch of drunk English people looped over and over again.

3 Hey Willpower — “Hundredaire”
There’s a reason this is the first track off Hey Willpower’s “Dance” EP. If “Hundredaire doesn’t get your feet moving you have no soul.

2 Fall Out Boy — “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down”
Stop judging me! Stop! Judging! Me!

1 Gorillaz — “Feel Good Inc.”
No one puts a single together like The Gorillaz, and that’s as clear with “Feel Good Inc.” as it was with “Clint Eastwood. Except this time, I think they included a Don Quixote reference. Which is bad-ass.

And of course, last but not least,
Mort’s Top 5 Emo Albums of the Year (with a forward by Mort himself):

First: a language lesson.

“Emo” is perhaps the most misused word in the English language (though it’s technically not a word) when describing music. It’s used to denote virtually anything that’s post-hardcore/punk/ska/indie or performed by White males since 1995. (These songs usually are about White girls, because, less face it, White boys ain’t got no game.)

This is incorrect usage.

In fact, “emo” really means “Rites of Spring or Sunny Day Real Estate’s first album.”

But as language evolves and technical definition has become far too limited, I’m proposing a new definition: “Music you might hear on your local ‘Alternative’ stations by bands who still spell their names right.”

With that said, here are the Top 5 Emo albums of 2005, complete with increasingly inane genre identifiers (It would have been top 10, but let’s face it: it’s been a bad year for Emo.)

5 Straylight Run — s/t
(ambient piano emolosophy)
Technically released in late 2004, Straylight Run self-titled debut received notoriety in 2005, thanks to the both brilliant and aptly titled track, “Existentialism On Prom Night.”

4 Bright Eyes — I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
(acoustic post-emo-core)
(Mostly) long gone are the days when Conor Oberst would scream into the microphone. Nevertheless, he still makes lovesick White boys everywhere want to rip out their heart and pin them to their hoodies.

3 Coheed and Cambria — Good Apollo, I’m Buring Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness
(chick hair emo–core)
Coheed and Cambria, by now staples of the scene and loved by White girls everywhere who are too good for Good Charlotte, hit us again, this time with single “The Suffering,” which features the line: “Now listen well, will you marry me?” Six times.

2 Death Cab for Cutie — Plans
(nostalgic emo-synth)
Remember the days before The Postal Service, when Death Cab had a unique sound and Ben Gibbard was still one hell of a lyricist? Neither do I, but that’s not the point. Death Cab can be said to be the Counting Crows (or R.E.M., or U2) of Emo, a softer, more mature sound for the older, wiser, lamer, emo-folk. Here’s to their figuring out the finer points of Cartesian dualism.

1 Fall Out Boy — Under the Cork Tree
(power-punk-pop-emo — with a lemon twist)
Without a doubt champions of this year’s emo scene, Fall Out Boy proclaims on the first track: “We’re only good for the latest trend.” But it’s clearly untrue, given their innumerable hits. They’ve even released a Christmas song full of holiday cheer entitled “Yule Shoot Your Eye Out.” These guys are here to stay.

There you have it, the first in what will be a overflowing stream of top 10/5 lists over the next few days as we approach 2006. Cheers.

I should positively be asleep. But here I am, building this gallery. Storytime: I started my career as an amateur photographer in high school, of course, and was probably in the 10% of people in the class who took it at all seriously. There was this very loose structure that gave you an off-campus pass for an hour-and-a-half prior to lunch. Incidentally, this transformed into a 2.5 hr lunch period for most everyone.

Anyhow, I actually do it because I really love it. I’ve done family portraits for several people, it has served as a nice substitute for Christmas and birthday gifts at times, and I even once had a bunch of pictures framed in the window of Dotson’s Photo in downtown Bend, OR. Besides this, it has gone nowhere. However, my Mom has been very supportive in the equipment department recently, and I now have a very nice digital SLR (Canon EOS Rebel), and a new 75-300mm lens for it as of 12/25/2005. So I’d better start producing some things, eh?

So go check out my gallery, and I’d love to hear comments. You can leave them here…somewhere or another, or email me at smhollen at gmail dot com.

Acknowledgements: this is obviously a vdov production–thanks to acosta for all the work setting this up.

We’ve added a new image gallery here at vdov.net for shollen’s photography. You can find a link on the sidebar to the right or just click shollen.vdov.net. The gallery is in the process of being created so there isn’t much content yet, but there will be soon so stick around and keep checking back. Shollen just officially took over control of that gallery so … I’m sure things will actually get done.

In other news, the site redesign and upgrades have gone less well than I originally expected. Not because of any real technical reason but more because my CSS sucks and I can’t get the new site to conform to my OCD-influenced standards of excellence. So … I’ll get there, just might take more time than I had originally hoped.

Ok I still have presents to wrap for my siblings so this will be short. I played a little Las Pesadillas so I will refer you back to a review of this album here on vdov by Dkraft. This podcast is really theme-less but recorded in the hopes that it will be a little Christmas (Hanukka or whatever) gift for all of you listeners out there. Things are feeling pretty Christmassy around here with the tree up and all the little family traditions getting done (such as the staying up all night with the little brother and going to Steak n’ Shake). We also had the Fischer Family dinner and cracked open the bottle of wine that was bought when I was born. It was well worth the 23 year wait. I hope everyone is having a good weekend with family, friends, etc. The podcast schedule will be very fluid for the next week or so. I will be in NYC for new Years and here in Indy until this Tuesday. There are a few projects in the works here at vdov. Acosta has been overhauling the site so he will obviously keep you up to date on that. As far as content we have top 10 lists coming your way. Brendan Mortimer will be guest appearing with some top 10 goodness and then we will be publishing the “official” vdov lists. There is a DIY podcasting guide that I am working on so people can get a handle on making their own podcast for little or no money. I am also hoping for some pictures for the gallery from the vdov writing staff for Christmas and New Years in our various locales. So all of this (one might hope) will be done before the end of this year. There will also be an ongoing side project of mine on the new awesome site wayfaring.com which allows you to make metadata tagged maps with the Google Maps API. I am working on an “Indie Indy” map that should be a guide to the best places in Indianapolis. Until these gems tumble forth from this domain I leave you with the podcast:

1) Brian Eno - Baby’s On Fire - Here Come The Warm Jets
2) Listing Ship - Crooked Teeth - Time To Dream
3) Dangerdoom feat. Cee-Lo - Benzi Box - The Mouse and the Mask
4) Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away - [self titled]
5) Las Pesadillas - Recent Carnival of Crime - Quantum Immortality
6) LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations - [self titled]

UPDATE: As I said I am working on a wayfaring.com map for Indianapolis. Here is it’s current status, but mind you that not only is this project new and ongoing the site itself is quite new and still expanding rapidly/fixing bugs.

Well, it’s just that time. Although the current design and layout of vdov.net has served us all well, I’ve decided to, during the next few days, bring vdov.net into the 21st century with some very very clever new features and a brand new look. Huge props to Alec and the Bowdoin Robocup team for inspiring this endeavor. I’ve decided to undertake this now simply because there is no other time in the foreseable future where I would have time to do something like this. So, here are some goals:

1) Implement a theme switcher such that users won’t be bothered by my constant tinkering with the new design. This should be done, well, today.

2) Spend a large amount of time relearning my CSS/PHP and implement some fancy new AJAX, etc.

3) When the new design is aesthetically finished, I’ll switch over and remove the theme switcher. I expect this to happen fairly soon. Who knows, since this is Christmas eve and most people are spending time with their families, it might be the perfect time to get this done.

4) User opinion poll … vdov.net has grown leaps and bounds in popularity lately (especially in December traffic), and I want to know what everyone thinks about the new design.

5) Last but not least, final tinkering and implementation of remaining, new and/or requested features.

After all this is done and Wordpress 2.0 is released, I’ll move the codebase! You should all know that what you see now under the new theme is not at all related to the final result. My real point in writing this up is to let everyone know that vdov.net will be undergoing a major overhaul in the next 7-8 days, so expect things to be weird. You never know what you’ll end up seeing, so check back regularly!

The site has been lax on the posting lately so I thought I’d update people on a couple stories I thought everyone would appreciate. As you all know, I’m in Oregon enjoying what I believe to be some well deserved vacation time with my family and friends here in Bend. I’ve recieved a couple gifts early this year that I would like to share some information about.

First, there’s a wonderful gift from Shawna. Because of my lack of a digital camera, I’m unable to provide a picture of the gift, but I’ll do my best to explain it. It is … drumroll … a JPL mechanical pencil. This is not just any JPL mechanical pencil, and I’d like to elucidate some of the finer points of its operation.

1) The pencil is about as light as I’ve ever felt in a writing utensil. I suppose this isn’t much of a suprise; I’d expect any pencil from NASA to be chock full of the latest and greatest in materials technology. So, I’m initially intrigued.

2) The second thing I notice is the very prominent “China” sticker attached to the back of the pencil. This does not bode well. Apparently we here in the US are incapable of building a lightweight pencil for our NASA/JPL scientists.

3) After writing a few lines with it, I go to erase something. Oh wait, that feature has not been included on this years China/NASA/JPL-born mechanical writing utensils. Hmm … what am I to gather from this obvious lack of oversight and forethought?

4) Last but not least, after putting what is obviously a less-than-important aspect of NASA/JPL’s research program through its paces, the JPL logo immediately wears off, leaving nothing but a lightweight, featureless, barely usable mechanical writing device in my hand.

Damn it Shawna. Seriously. What am I to gather from the absolute inability of our nations space and physical scientists to build simple writing devices. Of course we all know I am kidding on this subject. I’d like nothing more than to go work for NASA when I finish my Ph.D. in chemistry — but, quite honestly, I won’t even consider it unless I recieve a much more satisfactory pencil sometime in the very near future.

Secondly, I got a package from Amazon this morning addressed to “Tony Beardsworth Costa”. After debating whether to open it for quite some time (thinking it perhaps was meant for opening on Christmas day), I decided to give it a whirl. As it turns out, my much-richer-than-myself friend Andrew Killian Fischer felt pitty on my inability to purchase technical books now that I’m in graduate school and got me 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition. This I’m really excited about … I’ve always wanted to know a lot more than I do about 802.11 fundamentals and framing, as well as the vast array of security-related 802.11 issues. Yay.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful break/Chirstmas/holiday/whatever and that I see you all soon. Oh, and damn everyone who is going to Allison’s party in NY for new years … I *really* want to be there. Cheers.

I know it is a bit late but I have been spoiling my listeners recently. They have come to expect timely, and content rich, sermons which I seriously cannot make the de facto standard. Anyway this week we go back and revisit some Dengue Fever, which I like more an more every day. I am contemplating a move to Cambodia if this weather holds up here in Chicago. We are in for a nice “warm spell” of mid twenties. More appropriate for the climate I also played some Arctic Monkeys. This is a relatively young band that is rising quickly (despite the horrendous name). Who knows, they might even be popular some day. We did have a couple requests filled that have been sitting on the back burner. One was for the emminent Dr. Juan J. Martinez of the University of Chicago Microbiology Department. The other request was for our own Shawna Hollen, a physicist who works for the prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA. As always we here at vdov.net strive to bring you there very best from inappropriately muddling together music and science. So for Dr. Martinez we play some old punk and for Shollen we play her friend “Zac’s” unfinished and untitled mp3 that he has turned out and may provide lyrics for. I applaud the effort because this is the kind of do it yourself content providing that the podcast/blog/website generation is all about. We are the content providers, we are the content distributors, a very progressive and libertarian ideal for the internet age.

As you may or may not care about (Costa I am looking in your heathen direction) it is the Christmas season. This is a season of giving, Jesus, and commsumerism (but mostly consumerism). This also means that I am draging my net hoping that there are some extremely wealthy readers/listeners who are really into giving indie podcast providers extremely lavish and unreciprocated gifts. This would work out really well for me because some of this stuff is slightly outside of my means at this moment but it would actually benefit you, the listener/eccentric wealthy gift bestower by improving the quality of this indie sermon.

1) The Griffin lapel mic, iMic, and iTalk to complete a podcasting trifecta of excellence. This would allow The Right Reverend to go mobile with the podcast and conduct some interviews etc.
2) The Amazon Criterion Special which has nothing to really do with the podcast but I kind of want and have nowhere near the funds to reasonably justify thinking about a situation where I might be in a situation to buy it.

That is all for now… until Friday then (this may be an Indiana podcast):

1) The Gris Gris - Ecks Em Eye - For the Season
2) Dengue Fever - Tip My Canoe - Escape from Dragon House
3) “Zac” - (untitled and unfinished) [eratta: I call this acoustic... I meant instrumental]
4) Naked Raygun - Rat Patrol - Throb Throb
5) The Gris Gris - Pick Up Your Raygun - For the Season
6) Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales of San Fransisco - Beneath the Boardwalk
7) Belle and Sebastian - O Come O Come Emmanuel - It’s a Cool Cool Christmas

Also make sure to check out the genltemen of leisure who also happen to be local Chicago podcasters over at m4rk3t-fr3nzy. It is quite good and a different flavor than my podcast.

UPDATE: More from Zac here and here with samples and titles!

This Firday was the University of Chicago’s Microbiology Department Rickett’s Symposium. Howard Ricketts is one of the unsung (the wikipedia doesn’t even have an article) scientific pioneers of the early 20th century. He was a University of Chicago faculty member and was one of the early pioneers of microbiology. He isolated the causative microorganism for both Typhus and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and eventually succumbed to Typhus, the disease he studied. The Rickettsia family has strange microbiology for bacteria. They actually live and reproduce within the cytoplasm of host cells, more like a viral infection than a standard bacterial infection. Interesting Rickettsia biology aside, Dr. Ricketts’ family decided that his legacy was not strong enough at University of Chicago so they made several donations to the university and Argonne National Laboratories for laboratory space and to fund the Ricketts Symposium. It is basically an afternoon of talks by eminent scientists have really excellent projects.

Probably the most exciting speakers was Michael Rossman, from Purdue University who studies T4 bacteriophage, which is an E. coli specific phage. For those not in the know here is some info on bacteriophages, which have the ability in some cases to grant bacteria “special” powers by inserting small bits of helpful DNA into the bacterial genome. Dr. Rossman is primarily interested in defining the structure of phages on an angstrom level scale. This has proved extremely difficult because the normal methods for finding protein structure such as X-ray crystallography are not effective with phages because they include so many protein subunits and are so large (in T4’s case ~4000 angstroms long and ~1000 wide) that they do not crystallize. To overcome this Rossman uses a combination of X-ray crystallography and cryo-em density (example from UCLA) which is essentially fancy electron microscopy. From this research they have actually been able to show on a molecular level, the structure of T4 phage. It is basically an nano-syringe that literally injects viral DNA through the exterior of E. coli from a protein head using a protein injection apparatus. This DNA is then able to code the machinery that can build the protein syringe and then load it (using a ratchet system) with DNA strands. I will see if I can get a hold of some of the videos that he used in his presentation (that are not on his website). He also has an impressive list of free software that they use in his lab.

My favorite speaker was Richard Losick who presented on his work with baceterial bi-stable switches. Many vdov readers will know about electro/mechanical bi-stable switches. Their organic counterparts work in almost exactly the same way. It turns out that many bacteria induce bi-stable behavior in response to environmental changes. The reasoning is this: If baterial colonies are presented with a challenge such as responding to a lack of water (just a fictional example), half of the colony will adapt to the lack of water and half will remain adapted to a water rich environment. Evolutionally, this allows the colony to survive if the water deficiency persists or if it was merely a transient drop in the amount of water. It lends a lot of credence to the idea that bacteria (despite their inherent simplicity) have evolved to support colonial survival over individual survival, a trait usually reserved for much more advanced organisms. I don’t have many good links for his research because his lab page is pretty weak (maybe that is the cost of being focused on the science?). However, he presented on an incredibly interesting bi-stable switch in Baccilus subtulis. B. subtulis has the ability to turn into spores when faced with starvation. Basically the bacterium can shut down and encase itself in a thick cell wall that can survive almost impossibly harsh conditions and long times. My father actually operated on a man who had a Bacillus anthracis (yes that is anthrax) infection from spores in a 10 year old wound. That means that the spores survived for 10 years in spore form only to be reactivated by trauma. The spore formation process is very energy intesive so the bacterium would “prefer” not to undergo it unless it was faced with a long-term nutrient shortage rather than a short term one. When faced with a short-term drop in nutrients B. subtilis enters one of two phases, the cannibal phase or the food phase. Half of the bacteria activate genes that encode a toxin and a killing factor as well as genes that encode immunity for both the killing factor and the toxin. The other half do not initiate any new genetic expression. This means that the activated bacteria actively kill their fraternal cells that are inactivated. This causes the inactive cells to die, releasing nutrients to nourish the active, killer cells. These nutrients are enough to sustain the activated cells through a temporary nutrient deficiency. If the nutrient deficieny continues then the activated cells sporulate in order to survive.

The last speaker is the head of my department, Olaf Schneewind. I will not get into his research yet, because it deserves a post of its own. Mostly this is due to the fact that he is in charge of the biodefense and emerging disease lab at University of Chicago. He works with bad bugs like anthrax, pneumonic plague, drug resistent Staphylococcus aurues, and other seriously nasty pathogens.

Ok just a quick note:

The podcast is going to be delayed until Monday proper. I am a bit swamped with things to get done so the midnight update will not be happening. However, the Monday podcast will still happen on Monday. If the spoken sections are no good that is because I am currently without my mic. It is currently in a basement in West Lafayette, IN. I do think that I will use this problem as an excuse to buy myself a Christmas present of a real mic. Just to get you excited… I have some original, DIY work from a friend of vdov’s very own Shollen as well as some requests from University of Chicago’s very own Dr. Juan J. Martinez Ph.D, who is a little more hardcore than one might assume.

Until the podcast is up I will leave you with a link to the Dreadful Snake podcast (the link is the RSS). Dreadful Snake is the father of a friend of mine who has a blues/folk podcast that is very well connected. I have metnioned him on the show a few times, but I believe this is the first direct link. The Snake is currently in China on business and will be there for the foreseeable future. It is not the normal vdov.net fare but a great example of podcasting nonetheless. I have been meaning to post this for a while because The Snake was someone who spurred me on to start my podcast. His website can be found here.

Well kids, I’m back in Oregon.

Yesterday started off quite nice. I drove down mid-morning to Indianapols where I was greeted by the Fischer clan. We all went over (with the Peachs sans Robert) to Butler University (where Mr. Fischer Sr. is on the board of trustees) and enjoyed a nice lunch/pep rally for the Butler v. Indiana State basketball game. I was able to stay till the end of the first quarter. I’ll let you all know this was the first sporting event, period, that I’ve been able to attend in the past 4 months, so I was very happy to be there. Thanks once again to the Fischers for being ridiculously nice to me and letting me stash my car at their place.

I spent the rest of the day in planes, flying from Indianapols to Cincinnati, then to Salt Lake, and then to Redmond. This is the first jet I’ve ever taken into Redmond/Bend, and I’ll tell you it’s quite an upgrade from the props that fly in here from Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. I arrived late (without my checked bag, of course) last night and immediately went to bed. I’ve prepared a list of important things that must be done while I’m here. It goes as follows: Taqs, Pilot Butte, New York Sub, Taco Stand, Skiing, Deschutes Brewery, McMins, Richie Rich’s 21st on the 21st, Christmas (who really cares about Christmas with all these other great things to do), etc. Those of you from Oregon know the drill.

In other news …

pts/0 acosta@smashy:~ $ uptime
10:59:06 up 200 days, 3 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

I’d also like to say, hooray to vdov.net for our first post with 20+ comments. On one of the shortest posts ever seen on this site. Also, check out the new recent comments section on the sidebar to the right. This was shollen’s idea, so if you all hate it, make sure your hatred is directed at her and not me. I just put it there.

Cheers.