The Banana Slug Chronicles

Heart Shaped Program

2010-02-28T00:27:00.000-08:00


#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

       int main                 (void ){
    double x,y,z,xi,      xd,yi,yd;int o,i;
 xi =3.0/80; yi =3.0/28; int px[80]; for (i=0;
 i < 80; i++) px[i]=0; yd = -1.5;for(y = -1.5;
 y < 1.5;y+=0.001) {o = 0; i = 0; xd =-1.5;for   
  (x=-1.5;x<1.5;x+=0.00001) {z=x*x+y*y-1;o|=(
    fabs(z*z*z+x*x*y*y*y) < .000002); if(x-
      xd > xi){ if (o) px[i++] |= 1; else
        px[i++] |= 0; o = 0;xd += xi;}}
          if (y - yd > yi){ for (i=0;
            i<80;i++){putchar(px[i]
              ?'x':' '); px[i]=0;
                }putchar('\n');
                  yd  +=  yi;
                    }     }
                       }

It's a heart-shaped C program that prints a heart. I did this in about 15 minutes, so it's not particularly clever obfuscation or particularly good code; it's just a quick-n-dirty implicit curve plotting function that's been...reshaped. I think you could get rid of the two lines at the top, but it's tricky because it's hard to make int putchar(int);double fabs(double); fit into the heart shape.

Here is the output:


                xxxxxxx xxxxxxx            xxxxxxx xxxxxxx                
            xxxx              xxxxxx  xxxxxx              xxxx            
         xxx                       xxxx                       xxx         
        xx                                                      xx        
       xx                                                        xx       
      xx                                                          xx      
      x                                                            x      
      x                                                            x      
      xx                                                          xx      
       xx                                                        xx       
        xx                                                      xx        
         xx                                                    xx         
          xx                                                  xx          
           xxx                                              xxx           
             xxx                                          xxx             
               xxxx                                    xxxx               
                  xxxx                              xxxx                  
                     xxxx                        xxxx                     
                        xxxxx                xxxxx                        
                            xxxxxx      xxxxxx                            
                                 xxxxxxxx                                 
                                    xx

Places I've Lived

2009-12-11T00:48:00.001-08:00

Here are the houses I've lived over the years, thanks to Google Street View:

1986(?)-1991: West Lafayette, Indiana (look straight to the end of the parking lot)

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This was Married Student Housing at Purdue University. I think it's called "Purdue Village" now, but it still looks the same. It looks amazingly familiar, actually. Here's my kindergarten school bus stop (my preschool is in the background), the Purdue University Airport where we used to go watch the planes (and the American Airlines ticket counter agent gave me a wings pin), and the park that I think we used to call Squirrel Park, whether or not it was actually called that.

1991-1995: Powell, Wyoming

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When we lived there, it didn't look quite so much like it was going to get up and walk away, and the neighbors had a big spruce tree, I think. Plus the porch was blue.

This was a nice neighborhood to grow up in. I could walk to school or the grocery store by myself, without being worried about traffic or gangs or drug dealers or rug dealers or sexual predators or actual predators. I compensated by making up things to worry about, like germs and deadly poisonous herbicides and pesticides and symptoms.

August-October 1995: St John, Maine (about 10 miles from Fort Kent)

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The "Stinky House!" There were bats in the garage (now gone, apparently) and fish and frogs in the backyard, the house smelled like urine, and the tap water was mud. We didn't stay here very long. But it was an adventure!

1995-1998?: Plaisted, Maine (also about 10 miles from Fort Kent)

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This was a pretty normal house, actually. The huge driveway got smaller and smaller over the course of the winter (we shoveled it by hand); when the snow melted we found that the newspaper people had put the "mailbox" for the newspaper right in the middle of the pavement. The mailbox was still there on street view a few months ago, but they seem to have moved it now. We had a moose in our backyard once, and a bear another time, and I would run to the back window every night to watch through the trees as the train went by.

Then our landlord sold the house to some people who moved in, and we moved to...

1998?-1999: Fort Kent, Maine

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Amazingly, somewhere with no street view! But I think I got the right house. This one was built by an electrician. It had every kind of light switch known to man, and the basement was oddly split up into lots of little half-finished rooms.

1999-2003: Lakeland, Florida

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And then somehow we were in Central Florida, where it was very hot and humid and flat. And I went to high school, and met lots of really great people, and somehow I actually liked it. But I didn't like Florida itself very much, and I never thought I would miss it. I thought it was rather monotonous, with its flatness and pine flatwoods and unidentifiable trees and strip malls and gated communities and Disney World plastic fakeness. And it's taken me until now to actually miss the mangroves and the alligators and the bathtub-warm Gulf beaches.

2003-2007: Caltech

This is a whole 'nother story...another day, perhaps.

2007-2008: Pasadena, California

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This was my first apartment. It was next to a construction site and had ants, leaky plumbing, and jalousie windows with no insulating value whatsoever, but I miss it anyway. There are better pictures over on Picasa.

And finally, or at least penultimately:

2008-2009: Pasadena, CA

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Still Life

2009-11-01T23:49:00.000-08:00

So I finally finished my still life. (Yes!)

I took pictures after each step, as I worked on it. I try to do this as much as possible: I like to go back and look at how the work has progressed. It makes me feel good about myself. It also lets me see which bits I still need to work on.

Here is the first step (not much to look at, I know):

And here is the completed painting (ta-da!):

Isn't it lovely? I'm quite pleased with it. Especially the shiny metal creamer with its reflections. And the lemon. :-) In case you wanted to know (which I'm sure you didn't) - it took me 6 steps. Normally that would mean I did it in six sittings, except I split the last sitting into 3 steps because I kept getting frustrated with the background and just couldn't get it right. So I actually did it in four sittings.

Little Things

2009-10-31T23:14:00.000-07:00

Sunset over Arcata: the view from our living room window.

This is the most beautiful thing I've seen of late. I haven't been outside much, except to go to the doctor, or the drugstore. It's nice to have the comfort of four white walls... but it's also nice to know that there is still beauty out there. I wrote the following impression almost exactly a month ago, immediately after walking home from school on an absolutely perfect afternoon. This photo reminds me of that afternoon. Maybe one day I'll even feel like that again.

---

A gentle breeze ruffles my hair, teasing my skirt into an intricate dance about my legs.
The afternoon sun shines gently down, warming my face and lending a golden glow to everything it touches.
As I walk along the few blocks home from school, my eyes wander to take in the cars, old and new(er), coated in a layer of dust and pollen, the cardboard boxes marked "FREE" full of junk, the recycling containers waiting by the curb.
The boards of the fences are weathered, the woodgrain stands out strongly, and the paint on many of the houses is worn and sometimes peeling.
There are gardens of vegetables, and many gardens of flowers that spill their brilliant bounty into the sidewalk.
The colors and textures arrest the eye: vibrant reds, yellows, oranges, blues, and purples; satiny petals that are sometimes velvet-soft.
The crisp aroma of ripe pears mingles with that of the newly-crushed leaves underfoot. A little farther on, a straggling blackberry beckons, lusciously ripe: fat, dark, and juicy.
I reach out to touch it, inadvertently bruising the tender skin - my finger comes away sticky. I absentmindedly put it in my mouth; savoring the heady taste/aroma: it is almost too ripe - a reminder that summer is coming to an end.
I turn the corner, cross the street.
The sun shines brighter, warming me; I take a deep breath, reveling in the clean crispness of it in my lungs, and look out at the bay, and then up at the trees, and the clouds piled up over the mountains. Turning back, I smile at the house with the window box full of hot pink tulips, and the nearby van with the vanity plate that reads "hu ph♥ed"
The breeze picks up, tugs at my skirt - it is time to continue. I move more fluidly now - I am carried along by the gentle call of wind-chimes. They ebb and flow, changing in tone and pitch but keeping a constant rhythm that pulses with the beating of my heart, of my feet on the sidewalk, of the breath in my lungs. The cars whistling by on the freeway below add an undertone to the music that is not discordant but not quite harmonious. It simply is.
I trail my fingers along the concrete wall, feeling the roughness of it, the bumps and hollows, the way it snags on my skin. Every sensation is awake, aware, wondering.
The chimes die gradually away, and the breeze deposits me at my door. I climb the stairs slowly, savoring the last remnants of sensation: the texture of the railing under my fingers, the smoothness of the paint, and the slight unevenness where it has peeled. As I step onto the deck, and turn to check the mailbox, I can feel my senses returning to their normal dulled state. But the memories remain.

---

Photo by me, panorama stitched together by Tom using Hugin.

Have you met our newest faculty member?

2009-10-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

It's Professor Fluff'n Dust! (Found at Safeway in Arcata.)

Still afloat

2009-09-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

The egg is still floating:

It's floating on a layer of saltwater at the bottom of the jar. The water on top is fresh. The egg is denser than the fresh water, but less dense than the saltwater.

Some of the excess salt that was suspended but not dissolved has settled to the bottom, so the picture is a little clearer than the ones from the first day.

In less (more?) eggciting news, here is a sunset from our living room window:

Eggfloat

2009-09-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

I made a magical floating egg!

Amazing discovery

2009-09-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

Occasionally upon looking at our old stove (a Tappan Holiday, in fact), I have had the following thoughts:

"It'd sure be nice if we had a light over the stove."

"You know, it almost looks like that back panel is supposed to light up."

"Nah, it couldn't be that fancy, could it?"

Well, yesterday I decided to look a little bit closer and found a button on the right side of the stove, between it and the wall. I pushed it and, after several suspenseful seconds of clunking and buzzing from a fluorescent starter that probably hasn't been used in 15 years:

Ta-da!

Such excitement to be had without even leaving home!

For getting the bugs off?

2009-09-05T22:27:00.000-07:00

It's a "Software Squeegee"! (from CVS)

Whosits and Whatsits and Schedules, oh my!

2009-08-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

'Tis that time of year again. Time for giving up the freedom of summer and trudging back into the classroom to stuff our heads full of knowledge until they seem sure to burst. But this year is different. This year, I am an art major.

My schedule is here. It is... vastly different than what I am used to. For one thing, my first day of class consists solely of six hours straight of art studio.

I also have a work study job in the HSU Interlibrary Loan Department. I should be starting next week, and I am super excited about it. It seems like it will be my dream job. Add that to the perfect classes and the perfect environment, and things should be just about dandy. Art, library, books, trees, ocean.... what more could a girl want?

Oh yeah - Tom's last post reminded me. I am a transfer Art student at HSU. I was (very briefly) a math major at Caltech... and then a biology major... and then an English major.... yeah. Anyway, I'm glad to be finally doing art (my first love) in what is quite possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been, with a library to run away to in case I get overwhelmed. Yep. Sounds good to me.

The Mighty Namesake!

2009-08-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

Here, we have the mighty banana slug, and the namesake of this very blog.

Watching the fog

2009-08-12T00:54:00.000-07:00

I say, a bit foggy out, ol' chap? Jolly good!

Slugs

2009-08-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

And, did you know that artichokes have crazy flowers? From the garden:

More photos here

Of Schedules and Wotsits

2009-08-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

I am now completely orientated and registered for classes. Here is my schedule. I am increasingly going over to the Google Empire for sharing things on the web, but I like my quaint and old-fashioned PHP script.

For just 3 classes this is a pretty intense semester, I think: fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and numerical methods. I'm starting in the middle of a 3-course series on numerical methods, which means I'll have to learn Fortran 90 ASAP. At least it's not Fortran 77, but expect Fortran rants ahead.

(By the way: I assume that most everyone who might read this already knows who I am. But in case you need some context, I am a master's student in Environmental Resources Engineering at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. Before that, I studied electrical engineering at Caltech, where I was (and still am) a Darb. Obviously, but just to be safe, this blog is not affiliated with HSU in any way, and should not be taken as in any way representing official views of the University.)

The Journey Begins

2009-08-10T23:29:00.000-07:00

Our story begins on a dry, hot day in Pasadena, CA. Our heroes (along with my mother and younger brother Michael) packed themselves and entirely more things than should have possibly fit into their honda civic and headed north.

--However, I have been informed that we initially headed East - West. Our hero laments the lack of cereal, and then decides to have a muffin, briefly becoming saddened that this would result in fewer muffins than were previously in existence, and then decides to have both a muffin and an english muffin and compare them.--

Meanwhile, the honda civic was traveling in a decidedly East-West-Northerly direction, and having many adventures, as documented on this map.

The first stop was in Santa Barbara, where a snack on the beach was enjoyed by all. Next, a stop for gas in San Luis Obispo. A decidedly uninteresting night was spent at a motel 6 in Salinas, where some members of the party got warm showers, while others had to bathe in streams of liquid ice. The following morning, the Golden Gate Bridge was observed and photographed, and a meal was enjoyed at Moylan's Brewery & Restaurant in Novato. The evening was spent at Seashell Inn at Point Arena, the most notable aspects being the warm shower, the wall-size photo-print of redwoods on the wall, the kittens outside, and the remarkably bad movie on TV - starring our illustrious governor himself. The next day featured the Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree, the Avenue of the Giants, dinner at Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka, and final arrival at our new home in Arcata, which was decidedly not hot and dry.