Photos and Projects

  A Shining Season:  Monster Faces A Shining Season, Clip 1 A Shining Season, Clip 2 A Shining Season, Clip 3

  Supernatural Selection "That brings me to the fourth kind of attitude toward ideas, and that is that the problem is not what is possible.  That's not the problem.  The problem is what is probable, what is happening.  It is impossible that everything that is possible is happening." - Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All, p. 77. When used in certain contexts, the number 4.6 billion seems to be a rather large number.  Today, if you had $4.6 billion you would be considered an extraordinarily wealthy person.  If you lived in a city which inhabited 4.6 billion people you would almost have the entire current human population living in close proximity.  If you traveled a lot and accumulated 4.6 billion miles of frequent flier mileage you would have traveled a distance exceeding that of 20 round trips to and from our sun.  And, perhaps the dimension which most magnifies this number from a human perspective is time.  4.6 billion years seems to be a long time when compared to

  The best discussion supporting the student/athlete approach to education that I have ever read is ironically from the Greek Philosopher, Plato.  An old college professor encouraged me to get my own copy of Plato's Republic and this was the first section I happened to turned to.  Another irony was that the professor wasn't familiar with the passage and told me I might have purchased the wrong book.  What a crazy incident.  Anyway, great quote, long but very well thought out.   "Now, the ordinary athlete undergoes the rigours of training for the sake of muscular strength; but ours will do so rather with a view to stimulating the spirited element in their nature.  So perhaps the purpose of the two established branches of education is not, as some suppose, the improvement of the soul in one case and of the body in the other.  Both, it may be, aim chiefly at improving the soul. Have you noticed how a life-long devotion to either branch, to the exclusion of the other, affects

  Excerpt from Cybersecurity training I took last week.  Below is a chart from TUV-NORD showing best to worst methods for detecting and remedying software issues.  The way I summarize this research is topping the charts for the most effective methods for preventing software defects are:  Reviews, Dynamic Analysis and Static Analysis.  Conversely, the least effective methods for preventing defects are:  Excessive Schedule Pressure and Excessive Requirement Changes.  The negative impact of the items in red at the bottom of the list mean that the method not only doesn't prevent defects they actually add defects to the software. Prevention Efficiency Range:  Reviews top the list Prevention Efficiency Range Prevention Efficiency Range: Excessive schedule pressure and requirement changes actually add defects Pre-test and Test Defect Removal Efficiency Range Effectiveness of Test Defect Removal Methods

  Below is a digital scan of a photo taken during one of the most electrifying 5,000m races in Olympic history at the 1972 Munich games.   Steve Prefontaine only 21 at the time leads most of the race following his own strategy, "running from behind is chicken sh#t".  Lasse Viren (228) is in second and would go on to win.  Prefontaine's untimely death in 1975 prevented a rematch between these two running legends.  Viren swept gold medals in the 5k and 10k in '72 and '76 Olympics establishing him as one of the greatest performers in Olympic history.  Viren is best known for his negative split running where each lap is faster than the one before.  In the 1976 5,000m finals for example, Viren's last 1500m would have placed him 8th in 1500m finals that year.  Many marveled at Viren's dominance in the middle distance running especially with having little to no racing experience in-between Olympics.  Viren was a full-time police officer in Finland who would take

  A few quotes of faith from the masters of science. "Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds, beasts, and men have their right side and left side alike shaped; and just two eyes, and no more, on either side of the face; and just two ears on either side [of] the head; and a nose with two holes; and either two forelegs or two wings or two arms on the shoulders, and two legs on the hips, and no more? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom, and the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside a hard transparent skin and within transparent humors, with a crystalline lens in the middle and a pupil before the lens, all of them so finely shaped and fitted for vision that no artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and