Wednesday, November 25, 2009 With Dustin's help I installed Windows 7 on my external hard drive. I had to reformat, but my data is actually on a different partition than the OS, so forethought ftw. It booted up fine. I ran the stats program and it brought the whole computer down. *sigh*. I've restarted again and things look stable for now. I'm going out to get comics and lunch.
Unrelatedly I'm petsitting a gerbil for a few hours. Labels: dissertation, personal link : 12:08 PM
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009I Am Not a Crook Last night the power flickered just enough to reset some of the clocks and shut off my iMac. I was very well-saved so I just rebooted it back up. No problem! This morning I was motivated to get an early start on my dissertation. The most important task is to visit the Windows side where my statistical analysis program is, load up the results of data analysis, and carefully document in writing each test I did.
I booted up the Windows 7 side through VMWare, and... Windows alerts me that my copy is "not genuine" (i.e.. I'm a filthy pirate). Well I'm not! Past Microsoft's dirty insinuations I believe the program that sniffs out pirates was corrupted and, finding internal errors, assumed that it had been hacked. Then it locked me out of the operating system. I've spent the entire day (from 9AM to 4PM (curse you daylight saving time!)) trying to find some way to get a Windows 7 boot disc to start up my VMWare Windows partition. I bought Windows 7 through a digital download so I don't have a boot disc in hand. I think Dustin and his computer(s) will help me, so until he comes back from work I have to do other things. I've uploaded a few sketches to my DeviantART. Check them out here. These are mostly from 2001-2003 I think. Flickr also has more vacation photos. Labels: art, dissertation, personal link : 5:58 PM
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Thursday, November 19, 2009Emergent Layer While in the middle of a large forest it is difficult, if near impossible, to know exactly where one is. Unlike for example, a tunnel, there is no point of light to focus upon to guide one towards the boundary.
It is with great relief that my advisor has told me that I am in fact near a clearing. The analysis I have been working on has been deemed solid and meaningful. Very little more is needed to fill in the gaps. Now the task is for me to write it down and present it to my committee. Another step I have to take is to start applying for jobs. Just as the forest is one of my own design, the clearing (which isn't clear at all) will also be my own doing.  Labels: dissertation, personal link : 2:14 PM
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Sunday, November 15, 2009Touring the East Coast Two weeks ago I met up with my parents to visit relatives in New York. I haven't been there in at least 15 years! We also also went on bus tours down the East Coast, seeing places like D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Cambridge, New Haven, and Newport. I'm uploading pictures to Flickr little by little. Right now I have pictures from Baltimore and some of D.C.. Enjoy!
 {Seagull on a lampost in Baltimore.}  {Lincoln Memorial at night.} link : 3:32 PM
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Sunday, November 1, 2009Just Chill, to the Next Episode Not too much as been going on in my life recently. Soon though I will be visiting the U.S. east coast for the first time, which should produce many great photo opportunities. Right now, between writing words here, I'm scanning my pencil drawings from 2001-2002. I'll share the ones I like on DeviantART. There are a lot of drawings of characters from The Epic of Karie. It's amazing how many details I had forgotten when I committed the story to digital paint. Maybe these discrepancies can be restored when it's made into a cash-in Medieval fantasy movie. If Eragon can do it, anybody can. Here is a sneak preview of my sketch collection:
 {Upper left: Amy and Lori from Collegetown. Right: Karie from The Epic of Karie.} The funny thing is that a lot of these are on class notes. How did I find the class time to do all of these? I guess there is a funnier thing: the class notes without drawings were recycled a long time ago. link : 11:49 PM
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Thursday, October 22, 2009Awesome Things My friend Melissa has started a small side enterprise crafting miniature foods. She just started recently but you wouldn't know it looking at her work. I had to get a typical Peruvian food immortominiaturized and I chose maíz morado, the purple corn that is used to make the lunchtime drink chicha morada. This is what Melissa made:
 The board is just an inch across! Her shop, Mousemarket (I know, isn't that a cute name?!) is on Etsy. Chicha morada itself is also awesome. I just made a pitcher-full from an instant mix I brought back from Perú. Mmm! I've also signed up for yoga classes at the new Element Yoga and Health Studio. It's like karate class, but I don't have to remember a thing! The instructors here are also very friendly and positive. I've had a lot of fun spending quiet stretching time with them. And they are far less creepy than the Wii Fit instructors. link : 12:31 PM
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Thursday, September 24, 2009 I'm switching gears from my dissertation to my stature estimation project. I, uh... packed the dissertation data I was to analyze next. But stature estimation is important too!
Labels: dissertation, personal link : 11:37 AM
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Tuesday, September 22, 2009We Were Braaaaagging.... The irony is that I think Within You Without You is the worst song on Sgt. Pepper.
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Saturday, September 19, 2009All Cylinders Lately I have been having very fulfilling days where I do a variety of things, each a little at a time. For example, today I:
I hope many more days like this are to come. Have a good Sunday everybody! Labels: personal link : 11:48 PM
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Thursday, September 17, 2009Photos of Summer 2009 (Part 2) Last Saturday a few friends and I went to Cooper's Landing (you may have to scroll around), a store/campground/happenin' place on the Missouri River, around a half hour from Columbia. There was an Eco Art Fest there, with booths and live music. You know how I can't resist these things.
I got there first in the evening. I sat down in front of the music stage. A good place to watch for the others, I thought. A white erase board next to the stage advertised a raffle, around 15 minutes away. Soon enough, a woman was walking around selling tickets. I bought a few, since it was a good cause and I do have an interest in probability. I saw one of my friends, Mo, approaching. I got up to greet her and her friend. At that moment they held the raffle drawing on the stage. And they called my name! I won a sunset trip for two on the Missouri River! Just twenty minutes after I got there and minutes after I found Mo, we were putting on life jackets, getting ready to board a boat with the other winners. The boat ride was incredible. It wasn't a short little spin around the river, we were out there for forty-five minutes! The photo opportunities were great and many.                                  As we pulled into Cooper's Landing we saw our other friends waiting for us. We had delicious Thai food, took a walk on the Katy Trail in total darkness, and generally had a blast. link : 8:38 PM
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Saturday, September 12, 2009Moving On Up I just signed a lease at a new place so I'm spending my Saturday making boxes and filling them with my stuff. I'm packing up my anthropology books, which I keep next to my desk. As I took one of the dusty books out, my Diablo II: Lord of Destruction disc fell out! I've been looking for it for years!
Labels: personal link : 3:16 PM
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Monday, August 17, 2009Liveblogging My Dissertation I wanted to document my random thoughts as I work on my dissertation but didn't want to swamp Twitter and Facebook with my inanity so I'm putting it here. This started around 10AM.
I wish I could curl up in a ball on the lap of someone writing their dissertation. What a life! Reading about ancient Egypt. Very interesting! I want to go to the art museum in St. Louis even though museum pieces tend to be ill-gotten (ie. not archaeologically excavated). 1 Splenda in my coffee = hmm. 2 = oh my. I declare a Wii Fit break! Ah a nice jog in front of a TV screen. I just turned almost a page on Egyptian dynastic succession into "and then stuff happened." It would've been filler anyway. With rainy weather it looks so dark outside and it's not even 2PM. Oh nuts now it's thunderstorming. Should I turn off my computer or keep working? My laptop is at 5% power. :( Still on obviously. IM from a friend: "i am a magnet for married, engaged, or committed men." Me: "I'm nonferrous metal." Many "awwws" were subsequently exchanged. Gosh I passed out trying to summarize the Persian Empire in 100 words or less. You know what would be nice? Tea. It's interesting how the formation of Old World empires have changed over time. The earliest empires started in several specific spots: the Fertile Crescent, and the Nile River Valley. Then, empires started taking over both of these places, like the Persians and the Greeks. A third shift happened and the land around the Mediterranean Sea became the hotspot for Roman/Byzantine empires. What is now India and China got it's own smaller native empires later which effectively warded away the European/Middle Eastern ones. I'm sure there are technological and ecological reasons for these shifts that have been studied to death. But it was interesting seeing this in my own learning process. Labels: dissertation, personal link : 5:48 PM
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Friday, July 17, 2009Mr. July Before I'm last month's news, I want to tell you that I was the July featured creator at the Midmococo website. Check out the enlightening interview here!
link : 6:10 PM
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Sunday, July 12, 2009A Cat, A Plan, A Collar: Camera Science toys! I like science toys. I had an ant farm when I was younger. It's still in my parent's garage and it still has the tunnel system the ants made. And their little corpses. But anyway, the National Geographic company makes science toys, including gems like the remote controlled snake, and a portable microscope, but what I had my eye on was the pet camera. $50 is a bit steep, and Target had it for $40 so I had to bide my time. It went on clearance two weeks ago and I snapped it up for $20!
This gadget is actually pretty sophisticated. It holds 40 640 x 480 pictures, and can take them from every 15, 5, or 1 minute. It charges like an iPod, by connecting with a USB cable to a computer. It is also supposed to be "water resistant" but I'm hesitant to put that to the test. Mister cat was the first test subject for this pet cam. He doesn't like collars, and usually wiggles out of it after a few hours, so he could only take pictures inside the house. I put it on him after breakfast and let him do his thing while I slept some more.  {Mister relaxes in a sunny spot} I tried the camera on Luca next and let her outside. The results are hilarious... to me anyway. Here are views of my house from the neighbor's house:   There are also views from under the porch steps:  ... and under my car:   Next time, some of Luca's artsier shots! link : 9:46 PM
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Wednesday, July 8, 2009"How's Your Dissertation Going, Keith?" Quite good actually! My advisor okayed my introduction a few weeks ago. I dabbled briefly in some data analysis and I have found some very interesting results. So interesting in fact that I'm waiting to discuss them with my advisor before I continue. I'm putting the finishing touches on one of my background chapters, which gives my take (supported by research of course) on the evolution of culture in the Central Andes. Next is a hard chapter though: I'm going to briefly describe all known empires known archaeologically in the world. This is something I know almost nothing about, but it will really help contextualize my own work within what we know about human history in general.
Labels: dissertation, personal link : 8:37 PM
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Thursday, June 4, 2009Nirvana - Aneurysm So I'm picking up around 2 weeks worth of cat poo in the basement, and cleaning the litterboxes. The trash bag I'm scooping them into has a hole at the bottom, made by the cats because they can break in to the bag cabinet where there is now a torn-open bag of cat food. Of course it is the last trashbag in the house. OF COURSE.
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009To the Zoo! Part 2 I have some time in Lima's (and now, Miami's) airport so I'll continue the retelling of my trip to the Parque de las Leyendas!
I mentioned before that the park was more than a zoo: it also had some very impressive archaeological sites, part of the Maranga complex. It also had a botanical garden which was very peculiarly designed: it was basically one winding path that kept making sharp turns to make the most out of the plot of land it took. The problem was that I wasn't in the mood to walk through the whole garden, and once in there was no escape. I trekked through it, looking at some of the plants along the way. The signs were in the first person, and shaped like speech balloons, so it looked like the plants are narrating. Cute.  There was an archaeology museum in the park as well, Museo de Sitio Ernst W. Middendorf. I missed it on my first loop around the zoo, and I had to cut through the entire thing to get back there. I almost left without seeing the museum, thinking it won't be worth the walk, but I decided to go back after chastising my lack of sense of adventure. The museum turned out to be very good. It dealt with the local prehistoric cultures, the same ones whose remains I'm studying for my dissertation! It was nice to see a museum's description of the same general area. There was also a wonderful reconstruction of the Lord of Sipán, the elite whose tomb was discovered in the 1980s. The reproduction of his finery, including giant nose piercings and a ceremonial mace was very well done.  I left the park after seeing the museum (yes, I had to walk back through the entire thing to the exit!). I had seen on Google Maps that there was a local supermarket nearby so I went there for lunch. They had a buffet that charges by weight. I had some pasta and meatballs, and a giant hunk of flan. I went back to the hotel exhausted from the day's walking. To be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to going to Peru. The sense of familiarity played into that, since a lot of novelty has gone. But also I was in a blah mood a few months ago when I was scheduling this trip. Being here I realize I can see so much more if I just made the effort. Next time I go to Peru I want to allot some time to go somewhere completely different. My top picks are the city of Arequipa, a trip up the north coast to see the archaeological sites, or a trip far south to Lake Titicaca. Who knows I may see all three! link : 9:26 AM
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Sunday, May 31, 2009To the Zoo! Part 1 Last week while the students were away I decided to go somewhere in Lima I've never been before. One of my revelations during this year's trip is that Lima is becoming my comfort zone. That is good of course, because my familiarity with the city makes it easier for me to get around and get things done. I also came to realize that in a way I'm not being challenged as much as I want to be. I guess it's the part of me that was so taken by the cultural anthropology class back in 1998; sometimes I want to see new things and not be in my comfort zone. While some people get culture shock, I like the newness of things where all of my assumptions are out the window and I have to participantly observe to get by.
Anyway that's why I decided to go El Parque de las Leyendas (~Legends Park), where the zoo is. I've avoided going there before. The previous Lonely Planet guide said it wasn't very good, and actually kind of creepy. The current edition is more impartial. What sold me on this attraction was that the zoo is comingled with archaeological sites. How could I -not- go? I guestimated what bus routes would be the most convenient. Not to pick on the Lonely Planet guide, but despite what it says, it turns out the words painted on the side of each bus or van is actually a very accurate description of its route. That is, if you know enough about Lima's zones and main streets, those words make perfect sense. Actively trying to remember these strings of place names also gave my brain a decent concept of where to go to take a bus to a given location.  {Words on the side of a bus. Meaningless decoration or key to everything?} Luckily, the Villa Rica is within blocks of major streets going in every direction, so it is no problem going to where the buses are. I took a bus going westward towards the Pacific Ocean. It got off the bus at the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú. I was still a few blocks away from the zoo, but I planned for that too. I simply hailed a cab to take me that short distance. The smart part of this plan is that, if I took the cab from the hotel, it would cost around $3. A bus ride is usually 30 cents. Getting "within range" then taking the cab costs around $1.25. I basically cut the cost of getting there in half. Sure, $1.50 isn't much, but here very sol counts! It was around 9:30AM when I got to the zoo. Besides a few lines of school kids, I was the only visitor. The zoo is famously divided into 3+1 sections. Three parts, reach representing an ecological zone in Peru (coast, mountain, jungle), and a fourth for international animals. I took a walk around Huaca San Miguel (a huaca is basically the generic term for an archaeological construction) and ended up in the international section. This was definitely the oldest part of the zoo. The cages had concrete floors and metal bars, a style that was obsolete in the 80s. The male lion was pacing back and forth of it's tiny cage, with a shellshocked look in his eyes. My heart sank a little.  {The lion dreams of his future new exhibit.} I took a walk around the international section. I was the only visitor there so it was eerily quiet, except for the animals. I passed a few zoo staff preparing for the day. In typical Peruvian fashion, they greeted me warmly as I passed. After passing the tigers, ostriches, giraffes, and hippos I entered the jungle section. So this is where the money has gone! The jungle exhibits were fantastic. The tortoises had an enclosure fit for several lions. The black panther and its tiny baby also had an extremely spacious exhibit. I started to think that the lions must have gotten some zookeeper angry! As it turns out, a look at the zoo map shows that the big cats are getting their own exhibit next. Whew! I felt a lot better about this zoo. There were a lot of animals I've never seen before at this zoo, which was very nice. There were peregrine falcons, king vultures, and sloths! A stream filled with lilies wound around this part of the zoo. By this point the zoo had a lot more visitors. A little kid ran up to me and told me a story about his grandmother's turtles (which she ate). Passing by some teenagers looking at a reconstructed jungle hut I heard this in Spanish: "What's this?" (indicating the barren one-room hut) "I think this is where the jungle people hooked up." "... I think that's just their house...." Leaving the jungle I went to the mountain section. True to its theme, there were lots of stairs and ramps. An archaeological site loomed over one side. This quarter of the zoo had all of the llamas and alpacas. The andean condors had an enclosure which may just be a tad too small (they did have room to soar however briefly from one side to the other). The last section I saw, the coast, was the smallest. There were literally four animals there: sea lions, Humboldt penguins, some sea birds (I lumped them together), and andean foxes. (Counterpoint: the official website lists 49 species). I wasn't too enthused with the coastal fauna anyway, except the foxes which were really cute, so I kept going. Kept going? But I saw all four sections! Actually the Parque is far larger than just the zoo.... link : 7:49 PM
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