Music Monday: iTunes for Christmas!

Happy Music Moday New Year, everyone! I know all my readers (and after the holiday hiatus, I think that includes Mrs. E and myself) have been long awaiting more posts about music. Here it goes!

For Christmas, Mrs. E got me a $50 gift card for iTunes! Don't ya just love her? And, even though I found it two weeks before Christmas I refrained from pulling the trigger and buying until yesterday. Such decisions take time, you know? So here is the list of the official Euphrony Christmas Gift Music buyout.

1. First on the list was one I had been holding out for the last two months - Andrew Peterson's Ressurection Letters, Vol. II. As I knew it would be, it's worth the wait.
2. Next up, I had heard many good things about Jason Gray's live album, Acoustic Storytime (Live Songs and Stories). It's a blend of music from his latest album (All the Lovely Losers) and older music, with some stories in between. I love it.
3. Next up was one that I had just heard about, from Stephen's blog - Béla Fleck and the Flecktones Jingle All the Way. If you've never heard the Flecktones or Béla play then you're missing out. One of my new favorite Christmas albums - it even has me listening to holiday music after New Year's!
4. I'd never really listened to Sandra McCracken's music before the Arts*Music*Justice Tour, but I fell in love with her voice and style there. So I decided to get her latest album, Red Balloon.
5. A few years ago I borrowed a copy of Down the Old Plank Road, a collaborative work between The Chieftains and a bunch of others. I played it solid for a couple of days, until I felt like I had to give it back. Why it took me so long to add to my collection I'll never know.
6. Now we're into some bonus time. But this is a small one. Laura Story recently released a single, Emmanuel. It was worth adding onto the list.
7. Okay, now I'm just cheating. And this isn't through iTunes, either. I pre-ordered a copy of Pierce Pettis' upcoming album, That Kind of Love. I should get it in the mail soon!

Now, who out there can count the musical connections in the above selected artists? I've got just about all of them connected, in one way or another.

This is part of the Bloggable Music Network's Music Monday.

Tags: Andrew Peterson, Jason Gray, Bela Fleck, Flecktones, The Chieftains, Sandra McCracken, Laura Story, Pierce Pettis, Music Monday, iTunes

My Major Award

No, it's not that major award. But I understand that some lucky(?) guy on eBay won the rights to stay at that house (with the major award) for Christmas Eve and Day for the low, low price of $5300.

No, this is my Major Award. It's from NASA! (Note: frame not included.)

I've obviously done a little editing to the certificate, in order to protect my pseudo-anonymity. But it is a real, honest to goodness certificate of achievement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I feel so honored. No, really, I do.

But wait, there's more! This certificate comes with a lovely gift, on some of the finest stationary you'll every see, from the United States Treasury (complete with the treasury seal), with a number preceded by a dollar sign, and redeemable at banks anywhere. Since this gift bears the U.S. treasury seal, I felt it my duty - nay, my honor and privilege - to that everyone out there who has contributed to the U.S. Treasury. I'm starting here in the bloggosphere, but soon expect to great everyone on the streets with a hearty handshake and a thank you. It may confuse them, it may get me injured or fitted for a new, tight-fitting jacket by men in white, but I feel I simply must.

So, thank you, to all of you who have contributed your nickels, dimes, and quarters to this award.

By the way, what is you best Major Award?

Four days with Inspector Clouseau

Thursday marks four days of my sitting through lectures by none other than Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Okay, it isn't really Peter Sellers' famous character, but close enough. A little older, portly, and with graying hair - but the exaggerated accent is there.

You'd think that would be fun, wouldn't you? Yes, he did talk about how there is very little resistance keeping a man and woman apart in the shower. And yes, he has repeatedly referred to some surfactants as looking like "cookratches" (cockroaches). But, how many ternary phase diagrams of surfactant/oil/water combinations can you look at in a four day period before the onset of insanity? Here, look at this one and tell me how long it would take you?

The worst part of it is that we brought this guy up from Venezuela to teach this He did the same thing 20 months ago. He is covering the exact same material. We were all hoping for a little more advanced teaching this time. The one thing he took out for this round - rheology of surfactant systems. Total bummer! Ah, well, such is life. I'll make it through this last day and then I'll be able to get back to some real work. Maybe. In the near future. I hope.

So as I walked out from work today to the sound of gunfire, I thought to myself . . .

. . . what a beautiful day this is. Really, since Hurricane Ike blew through we've had just really great weather here in Houston. The skies have been blue, the temperature has been lower, even the humidity has been down the last two weeks! Aside from the mosquitoes, which are swarming thick enough to drain an elephant in less than a minute's time, it's been practically perfect.

I, however, am a totally hopeless goofball. AKA engineer. For example, this morning after I got into work I encountered a minor setback in the clothing arena - the button popped off my pants. All I have to say is thanks be to God for belts! Of course, being an engineer, I found a solution to get me through the day. Enter life's little fix-it device: the paperclip. While the belt helped I looked really goofy with the pants trying to come apart, so I used a paperclip (in lieu of the safety pin I didn't have but wished I did) to keep the top of my pants relatively close together. So I traded one goofy look for another, hopefully less noticeable, goofy look. You see, Euphrony has not informed you, but he has been packing on a few pounds lately. And been in denial of needing bigger pants. Lesson learned.

(Oh, are you wondering about the title of this post? Absolutely true. It happens just about every day, as a matter of fact. When I don't have the small-arms fire, I listen to the lovely squeal of tires. I guess you might be worried about my safety, but don't be; I'm well protected working next door to the police academy.)

Ho do I get myself into these things?

Oh, that's right; I know how. I go out of my way to go to the concert of someone I really want to see live. The last time I ended up driving a couple of hours to see Sara Groves perform in a barn. This time I wanted to finally go see Addison Road after missing them the last few times they were in town. They didn't play in a barn at a fair, but it was in a big box - 50' high, 50' deep, and 100' wide. With a stage that was maybe 20'x20' that four bands cycled through. Honestly, I think the barn had better acoustics than this room. I'll be fair, then, and not really talk about how the bands sounded - it was all a little jumbled in that tight space.

Really, though, the evening was pretty good. After I got past feeling like a goofy, out of place adult, that is. There were maybe 100 people there with an average age of maybe fifteen. I came to the concert straight from work, wearing my normal dockers (i.e. not cool clothes). There was no seating, only standing at the stage - I'm waaay too old to be in the mosh pit. But, once the music actually started things got better.

The show opened with Philmont, a new band, followed by Our Heart's Hero. Both of them put on pretty good sets. I've learned something new - to play in a punk/hard rock band one must master Jedi fighting skills and apply them to playing guitar. It looked even better when copied by the six-year old boy down front.

Next came Addison Road - they did a great set, and the crowd seemed to get into them a little more the the first two groups. Of course, it helps that their song "Hope Now" has been all over the airwaves down here, with people really loving it since Ike hit town. After their set, once Pillar was hitting the stage, I got to sit and chat with Jenny Simmons and her
husband Ryan. These guys are always on the road, it seems. Their tour with Pillar ends tomorrow night, then next week they start a month plus with Building 429. They'll be starting work on a new album soon, so be looking for that next year sometime. The first thing Jenny asked me, was to what I do for a living. When I told her I am a rheologist (translate: science geek), she then asked me to explain the Large Hadron Collider to her and Ryan. I did my best.

Seriously, Ryan and Jenny are good people. I wish them well in their music - if you've not heard it, go check it out. We talked about Mocha Club and about Inspired to Action, among other things. Jenny, has been a big supporter of I2A - for which she gets a big thanks from me!

The whole Pillar tour is being sponsored by World Vision, and the shows are pay what you want. Having been to this show last night, with a turnout that looked like little more than people from the church where the show was held, I understand more about what Shaun talks about. He does a similar arrangement with Compassion and pushes the venues to seriously promote the show. The point is to bring people in, tell them about God's plan for us, and tell them how they can help save people - free them from the bondage of poverty - through Compassion or World Vision. When all they do is put it in the weekly bulletin they do a disservice to the people footing the bill for the show (Compassion/World Vision); more importantly, though, they do a disservice to the children in need of rescue. I chatted with the people at the World Vision table for a bit - nice folks, too. They told me the night was a bit slow on sponsorships. I hope it picked up after I left.

For my next concert experience I am going in a completely different direction. Tonight Mrs. E and I are taking the kids to see VeggieTales Live. Even a younger crowd; but, at least there's no mosh pit.

Tags: Addison Road, Jenny Simmons, Pillar, Our Heart's Hero, Philmont, Concert, World Vision, Mocha Club, Compassion International

Music Monday: The "Stranded on an Island" question

For this edition of Music Monday, I am posing the classic music question:

If you were stranded on a deserted island and could only have three albums, what three would you take.

Okay, so the question is a bit ludicrous from the outset - I mean, how many people plan on getting stranded and would then chose to only take a couple of records with them (as opposed to, say, a satellite phone and survival gear). But accept that and just tell me what music would be what you could not do without. Or, would you make an "Island Mix" CD? Do tell, please.

(My answers will be in the comments, so click on through to find out.)

Try these words on for size

I'll lay it on the line, here; no beating around the bush. I'm a strange man.

No, really. Strange, like me and other people don't work on the same wavelengths kinda strange.

Here's an example. I have been wanting to work these (among other) words into a normal daily conversation, but I live with disappointment as I continue to fail in this goal. Perhaps there have been times I could have used them, but I have refrained as I would have seemingly been showing off.

Here's the challenge. Can you use one of these words in a mostly-normal conversation? Bonus points for using more than one! You may use a form of the word if you wish.

Here's the prize. The winner (who will be chosen by a neutral agent) will get a $10 gift card for iTunes. The only caveat is that you reveal how your winnings were spent.

Here are the words:

depilation
birefringence
undulate
ogee
elhi
cruet
dongle

The contest will run through Wednesday, at which point I will have finished the next great paper in the Euphrony rheology repertoire and will need a good laugh. Good luck, and have fun with this!

Because Shaun asked . . .

I commented on Shaun's blog today, mentioning that I am reading rheology journals. Shaun responded:

rheology: the study of the deformation and flow of matter under the influence of an applied stress

What on EARTH do you do for a living?

Well, Shaun, since you asked - I’m a rheologist, of course!

I work for an oilfield services company, in research, developing and studying drilling fluids. I could give you a couple of references to papers I authored, but that would ruin my anonymity and you would probably lose interest in them before you finished the title. I did post an excerpt from a paper on my blog some time ago, pretty much just to scare people.

For me, I try to make fluids that you can pump down a hole that can be five or six miles long, have it viscous (thick) enough to remove the drilled up dirt from the hole but not so thick that it’s like pushing bread dough through a straw. Plus about a hundred other considerations. Oh, bonus! The common vernacular for drilling fluids is to call them "muds" (since they consist mostly of dirt and water). So I get to tell people I play with mud all day long - every little boys dream!

As for rheology in general, it has great application in everyday life. For example, take peanut butter. You want the processed peanut butter thick enough so that it doesn’t separate into that oil layer on top like organic peanut butters (most people like it this way). If it is too thick, though, you can’t spread it on bread without tearing the bread. There is a nice, non-scary article here that gives a basic explanation. The premise of rheology is that everything flows, everything is deformable, given a long enough timescale and the proper environment.

Rheology trivia:

1. The longest running laboratory experiment (as recognized by Guinness) is a rheology experiment. (Unsurprisingly, I’ve blogged this, as well.) In it, pitch (you know, the stuff Noah used to seal the ark) at room temperature – which will shatter like glass if hit with a hammer – has been left in funnel to drip for the last 78 years. In that time, it has produced eight drops. It has won both an Ig-Nobel Prize and Dull Website of the Year from the Dull Men’s Club.
2. Glass panes in very old churches in Europe are a prime example of everything flows. The glass is noticeably thicker at the bottom of the pane than at the top. Even though the glass seems "solid" it is really flowing over a very long time.
3. There is a rheological parameter named the Deborah Number, after Deborah in the book of Judges. In her song praising God in Judges 5:5, she sings "The mountains flowed before the Lord." She is thus commonly recognized as the first rheologist noting that, given God’s long-term objective, everything does indeed flow.

So, too much information? You can read some more that I’ve talked about rheology on my blog, if you’re interested. I wouldn’t be surprised if that link never gets followed, though.

I just thought I would't blog

As perhaps could be expected, I look away from the computer for a few days and find a million things worth sharing. Posting this, I feel a little like a store that does a "going out of business sale" every month. Oh well; I'm getting off work early today, so I have some time. Here, have a laugh.

And have a Mary Christmas, too. Just select one of the hundred or so Mary Christmases that aren't already taken, please; this one is married.

Our minivan has no antenna; thus rendering Mrs. E's collection of antenna balls useless. In steps Jack! Jack in the Box now sells antenna balls with the antenna attached. Uses a suction cup. Problem solved.

We ate dinner last night at a nice Italian restaurant. In the middle, Lil'E had to take a potty break. On returning to the table, she could be heard loudly saying "I couldn't get the second poo poo out. Help! Push it back in!"

From xkcd.com:

(My apologies for the last two to those not computer savvy or up with the periodic table. I laughed all day over these.)

Tags: Jack in the Box, Mary Christmas, Homonym, Quotes, Comics, CareBears, MySpace, Periodic Table, Pointers, Antenna Balls

Little Man; Big Nerd

I told you I still wore it. You probably didn't believe me, but here I am. Liler'E looks like a little man, I look like a nerd. Yep, that's me. Don't I look proud?

Geek Quotient: 8.7

Okay, I've made no secret of it that I am a geek. I have officially rated my interest in this radio show (that's right, I said radio show) as a 8.7 on the Geek Quotient Scale. Similar to the Richter Scale, the GQS is logarithmic; therefore, a GQ of 7 is effectively ten times geekier than a GQ of 6. Don't ask what the GQ of rating according to the GQS is: it's too high to measure.

But what can I say? I'm a sucker for the tidbits and connections to life that Dr. John Lienhard offers up in this weekly radio series, Engines of our Ingenuity. A professor of mechanical engineering and history at The University of Houston, he brings an interesting and unique view to how technology has influenced our lives. This has been a long-time interest, dating back to an undergraduate class I took on the history of science - very enlightening. For example, the common notion that when Christopher Columbus sailed in 1492 the majority of the world disbelieved his notion that the earth was round, favoring a "flat earth" theory. Wrong! The first measurements of the circumference of the earth go back to at least 230 B.C. and Eratosthenes. The only argument Columbus had with scientists was that he was intentionally choosing estimates of the earth's circumference that were small enough to make it seem that sailing west from Europe to reach China would be feasible.

Anyway, back to the radio show. How can you not find it interesting that one of the first computing uses was in the tracking of tickets of the burgeoning airline industry? Or that marbles in something like a gumball machine was the big step up from acres of chalkboards, before computers came on the scene. Or that TWA spent almost a half billion inflation-adjusted dollars in an attempt to build a reservation system named George - as in "go ask George" - before it had to scrap the project and start over?

Consider shoes. A great study was done on the shoes worn by Ötzi, a Stone Age dweller whose preserved frozen body was discovered in the Alps in 1991. The shoes were complex. The leather on the bottom was from a bear, cured in a mixture of bears brains and fat from its liver. Deer leather formed the top. All this was mounted on a mesh of braided linden bark with bindings made of calf leather, straw for insulation, and moss as lining. Recreations of the shoes prove to be warm, even in cold water, with excellent traction and no opportunity for blisters. In fact, Ötzi may have been better shod 5300 years ago, than we are today!

Seriously, if you've any geek in you - even the slightest bit - you should check this out. Transcripts are available for all 2273 episodes, along with the audio for each. You can try to find Engines on a local PBS station. Or you can listen to podcasts of the latest episodes.

Now, go geek out for an hour and get lost in the history of technology.

(Maybe I should file this under "Posts that amply demonstrate why it is you should make a point of ignoring me"?)

Tags: Science, History, Engines of our Ingenuity, John Lienhard, Circumference of the Earth, Eratosthenes, Christopher Columbus, Airline Ticketing, Computers, Ötzi, Shoes, Geek, Red Green Show

What I got to do today

Today, I got to present some of my research to the top corporate executives for my company. The CEO was called away to chat with investors, but the COO and others were there. Mine was a part of the technology review of the status of recent projects. We each had about ten minutes, including questions from the big boys, and needed to include a demonstration.

Here is my demonstration. Now, I know this may look like glitter settling in a tube - okay, it is just glitter settling in a tube - but it really demonstrates the way in which particles settling in an angled hole will evacuate the fluid more quickly. They first only have to travel to the edge of the tube, instead of the bottom, and then they slide down to the bottom (called the Boycott effect). This is a critical problem in drilling fluids called "sag".

Watch the whole video - it's worth it. There's a big payoff near the end.

Okay, I lied. There's no payoff. It's just glitter settling in a tube. If you're still awake, get up and move around to try and restore circulation before you're whole body goes numb.

I'm sorry. I can't promise to never do this to you again, but I'm sincerely apologetic for today's imposition.

Tags: Glitter, Tube, Settle, Sag, Corporate, CEO, COO, Demonstration

Get To Know Me: Nerd Edition®

Not too long ago, I did a version of Get To Know Me: Geek Edition^® which included an excerpt of a just finished paper for an upcoming conference. Well, two months have passed and I have successfully presented that paper; but I also moved on to the next paper (it seems all I've worked on lately is papers). I just finished writing that paper (you can take a breath and relax, I'm not including any of this paper on my blog), and it is due to the combined mental strain of solo-authoring multiple papers and the mind-numbing effects of sleep deprivation that accompanies a new child that I have not thought many deep theological thoughts lately.

Well, that's partially true. I've been preparing to teach a four-Sunday class at church on the Holy Spirit and I plan on putting those lessons up here, as well. But that's not until May, so in the meantime I will again entertain and stupefy with another in the Get to Know Me series. I now present the Nerd Edition^®.

1. I'm a engineer. I'm an engineer with an advanced degree. Enough said.


2. I don't laugh at Dilbert, I sympathize with him.
   


3. I always have a pen in my shirt pocket. The subtext here is that I always wear a shirt with a pocket. Hey, as the saying goes, they're handy!


4. I own these lovely ties, and actually wear them.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   


5. I once owned a shirt exactly like this one, displaying the periodic table with the radioactive elements glowing in the dark. Mrs. E made me toss it on account of too many holes. Such a pity.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   


6. For relaxation, I do crossword puzzles and Sudoku. I say for relaxation, because they really require little mental effort on my part. The Sudoku is all about number patterns, which come easily to me, and I can do the hardest ones in my head in around 15 minutes. As to crosswords, I do the New York Times puzzle in ink, and usually finish the whole thing. (The trick there is that puzzle authors have a bag of staples they always fall back on, and once you know those you can fill in a good part of most puzzles.)


7. Despite #6 demonstrating my mental prowess, I can walk up to a person I've worked with every day for the last six years and forget their name. Pathetic, I know.


8. I know how to put that little "circle R" ® symbol on my blog. It's not that hard, really.

The only possible redemption from nerd-dom I have is found in my wife (she'd never call herself cool, but at least she's not a nerd like me) and the fact that I seem to virtually hang out with some relatively cool bloggers. But even that is not enough to fully redeem one so nerdly as me.

Here's your opportunity, fellow nerds. Let's get it all out here. I'll let you cry on my virtual shoulder when the work bully makes fun of you. Share. I feel your pain.

Tags: Nerd, Dilbert, Engineer, Get To Know Me, Periodic Table, Tie, Shirt, Sudoku, Crossword

Get To Know Me: Geek Edition®

Okay, if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you will likely have discovered that I am a certifiable nerd. I've played the get to know me game a few times, here and here. I've been asked to refrain from quizzing people based on my particular brand of nerdlyness, and I fear I have not contributed enough to people's understanding of anything ending in "ology". But I press on!

I am a rheologist, by profession. I study fluid flow, how it behaves under different conditions, for materials that can alternately seem like water or solid rock - what is called viscoelasticity. Here, for your reading pleasure, is a small excerpt from a paper I have been writing for an upcoming conference. This has kept me fairly busy at work, between trying to write and working on getting the little things done that kept popping up.

It has been noted that, despite the flexibility of some of these models, no single model does a sufficiently good job of predicting the behavior of all types of drilling fluids. Modeling of fluid behavior is of extreme importance to predicting downhole performance, and the lack of a single model that can be consistently applied detracts from the ability to do so accurately. Recently, several models have been developed which attempt to better model the yield stress behavior of fluids and even incorporate structural terms to account for thixotropic behavior. Good use of these models, as with other models, requires more data points than are available from a 6-speed viscometer. However, the increasing use of field-usable viscometers with an extended range of strain rates makes the use of such models more viable. One model, proposed by Mendes and Dutra , provides more accurate modeling of experimental data and relative ease of calculating parameters. Their viscosity function (Equation 1) predicts an upper shear-thinning region, a yield stress plateau, and a Newtonian behavior at low shear rates. The type of shear stress and viscosity response to strain rate is shown in Figure 1. From these curves it is easy to estimate the yield stress, s_y, the zero-shear viscosity, h₀, and the shear-thinning index, n. Using the estimated value for n, K can be quickly calculated as the stress at g'=1 s^-1.

(1)

Figure 1 Shear stress and viscosity as a function of strain rate as predicted by Equation 1, the Mendes-Dutra viscosity function.

Another recent model, proposed by Møller, Mewis, and Bonn, provides a more interesting method for predicting fluid behavior. In their model, they take into account both traditional shear-thinning and yield behavior and add a component that models structural connectivity in the fluid. They begin with three basic assumptions:

1. There exists a structural parameter, l, that describes the local degree of interconnection of the microstructure.


2. Viscosity increases with increasing l.


3. For an aging (thixotropic) system at low or zero shear rate, l increases while the flow breaks down the structure, l decreases and reaches a steady state value at sufficiently high shear rates.

Based on these assumptions, they developed the following structural evolution equation and viscosity equations.

(2)
(Model I) (3a)
(Model II) (3b)

Here t is the characteristic time of microstructural build-up at rest, h_¥ the limiting viscosity at high shear rates, and a, b and n are material-specific parameters. Under steady state conditions, using Equation 3b, the stress behavior of a fluid may be modeled as

(4)

which, at high shear rates, yields Newtonian behavior. When 0 < n < 1, a yield stress appears in the model; additionally, a critical stress is predicted below which no steady state shear rate can be achieved and flow is unstable (see Figure 2). It is therefore possible to have a sample of the same thixotropic fluid exhibiting the same viscosity at a given strain rate, but with very different structures.

Figure 2 Shear stress and viscosity as a function of strain rate as predicted by Equation 4, for n=2. Illustrated is the critical stress below which flow is unstable.

Tags: Rheology, Euphrony, Nerd, Geek, Thixotropy, Yield Stress

From Istanbul to the Sun

Driving around in the car last night with Lil'E, we were listening to "Istanbul, Not Constantinople" from They Might Be Giants. We were rockin' out, let me tell ya.

Here, though, is my favorite song from TMBG - "Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)". Okay, so I'm a nerd. A mighty big nerd. A giant nerd. And I don't have to be ashamed anymore!

Tags: Music, YouTube, They Might Be Giants, Videos, Istanbul, Sun, Nerd