Recently my lab has been in the news buzzing around the tubes at lightning speed. It started with Science Daily, which in reality was reporting on a series of presentations at conferences around the country. It then made its way quickly to Physorg and then appropriately to Slashdot, where the fun really started. Here’s some background and then I’ll get right into mocking the hell out of the Slashdot audience. (more…)

Somewhere, once, and I don’t remember where I read a review of Scotland Yard Gospel Choir and I was immediately interested. However, I was not able to get my hands on an album and they didn’t have any music online (this has changed… they now have a great website with wonderful links and a lot of media at sygc.com). So they have been on my back burner for a long time. Luckily, the band is local to Chicago and they played last night at The Empty Bottle. As an added bonus it turned out to be the record release party for their new single “Then and Not a Moment Before” (also “In Hospital” and “Lamppost”, a demo, on the single). Even better it turns out that a friend knows about the band and between shots of Makers Mark (him not me) related some back story. Apparently they have had some rough times and member of the band left for other venues but now they are playing better than ever (or so the story goes). They also recently shopped deals with some major record labels and if the show was any indication it won’t be long. (more…)

If you have been paying very close attention you might have noticed that our “friend’s sites” have gone +1up. The addition is Tim Barz and some of his associates who founded NYStreetart.com. I just wanted to let you all know that there is a new site available in the vdov universe. They are not officially affiliated with us but nonetheless there is a lot of great stuff there. The whole idea is cataloging the various images and art on the walls and facades of New York and various other places (so far NY and Berlin). I am hoping that they keep it up and build a big database. They have already opened it up to user submissions via email. So if you find yourself in a place with some good street art, snap some photos, and get yourself over to NYStreetart.com and drop them a line.

A while back I wrote on the topic of courant stabilization as convergence criteria. That was back in the happy day when I was dealing with continuum mesh solutions in which I expected to find a final closed-form solution to the Navier-Stokes system with appropriate transport and conservations equations (see computational fluid dynamics). However, having successfully solved some of the issues I was hoping to solve in a pure fluid/electrostatic environment, the time has come for me to start treating some stochastic processes with this procedure. Specifically, this means particle movement. (more…)

I mentioned that Of Montreal has a brand new album that is just leaking all over the internet. The leak’s not a bad thing it’s a good thing. Everyone loves it! The name is Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? The so-called-single is “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse” and it now officially has a music video. The only problem is that this video is the worst parts of the 60’s all rolled into one. It is everything awful in the protein hippie synthesis video. However, the song is quite good. The only problem is that the video cheapens the song by making the concept of the album completely explicit in the irony of the video, destroying the fragile layer of belief suspension that allows you to listen to the intensely personal ravings of Kevin Barnes and come out the other side seeing the beauty. The introversion of the album is painted with a silliness that is the hallmark [of] Of Montreal and the what strings it all together is the belief that underneath it all Barnes really means it and isn’t just taking us all for a ride. There is a small hope that artistically the album is not just glam-rock doused with feelings and that it is really feelings dusted with glam. The video would work with something more pat and disposable as an ironic statement but in the context of Hissing Fauna it falls far short of what it could be. That being said, it is still fun and maybe that is the weird beauty [of] Of Montreal. You can’t completely love or hate it and there is a certain art in that. Well, take a peek and enjoy the music even if it means blocking the visual. (more…)