Yea… no action — I know — I’ve got finals coming up — I’ll definitely write about some of my experiences (the first semester of graduate school in physics, the first few months in my house (LOTS of stories in the category…) over xmas break – FOR SURE.

Anyway, I wanted to get this out there though – something on my mind, hah.

OK So gmail came out with some pretty sick themes a little while ago — they’re awesome, don’t get me wrong, but I have a bone to pick with the Tree theme.  It’s the coolest one, obviously, because it updates based on the weather outside — at least semi-accurately.  So far I’ve seen SUNNY, CLOUDY, RAINY, WINDY — and these have all been nearly 100% accurate.

But GMAIL Team — really, you went through all the trouble to get the weather based on the location I input and you can’t be bothered to look at the TIME to see whether it’s dark or light outside?

That’s a bit ridiculous if you ask me. (:

So — in short — Thanks for the theme, but please, put less than .5 hr more work in to make the background color change based on night/day — so that the sun is not blaring in my face at 2:00 A.M.  Then it’d be my favorite theme as well as THE perfect theme. (:

Cheers!

–Justin

Palap?

Palinilap?

Palindrordnilap?

Palindromemordnilap?

Coffee — just some random Folgers my mom got me — Thanks mom.

Shpongle — electronic music I was introduced to by my friend Emery Clark.  — This is my favorite song they do –> Shpongle – Divine Moments of Truth

Computer — eh, you get the visual.

So far this morning I’ve watched a movie called Dark Matter, which I thought was relatively well put together minus the ending.  I won’t ruin it for you.  Regardless, there was a particularly moving scene where this Chinese foreign student who has just come to America for Graduate school is discussing Cosmology with the tea/coffee house female barista.  He is trying to impress her, but she comes right back at him with the idea that the Big Bang was caused by God.  A beautiful dialogue followed, and I think I’ve always adopted this perspective, though maybe not explicitly.  Check it out:

“You study the Big Bang ? It’s supposed to be the beginning of the Universe?”

“Mm hm, Mm hm.”

“I don’t believe it, because something had to cause the Big Bang… It didn’t just come from nothing.”

“What do you think caused the Big Bang?”

“God.”

“Then what caused the God?  He can’t come out of no where.”

“He’s eternal. :shrug: He’s always been there.”

“In my new theory, the Universe is eternal. Big Bang is a major event, but not the Beginning.  The Universe has no beginning, no end, just like God.  So you see, we are really the same.  Universe and God is the same.”

It’s my understanding that the idea of No Beginning and No End comes from Chinese culture, but at the same time I remember at the last Wedding I went to for my cousin Russell and new cousin Katie, they referenced the Ring with no beginning and no end like “God’s love.”  Hmm.

It’s amazing how much time I have spent just staring at the 36″x36″ poster of this image on the wall in my room.

The craziest thing happened today when I entered the Computer Science Lab as the Lab Assistant. I saw ‘the’ image on someone’s screen. Whoa, what is that person doing looking at ‘the’ picture? Are they as humbled and intrigued as I am by this image? Do they want to discuss it with me? Come to find out, today’s lab dealt with Photoshop and the students were to estimate the number of galaxies in the image based on a grid. Answers ranged from 3,000 to 1,000,000 but most of them were around 10,000 which seems to be about right.

The thing is, if you think about it – we’re looking at a picture of the sky with 10,000 galaxies in it. Ok, so what – there are 10,000 other galaxies in the Universe, I don’t feel that small. Wrong. The image is the equivalent to holding a grain of wheat up in the air at arm’s length in the sky. So we must extrapolate this 10,000 stars/wheat grain across the entire sky to estimate the total number of galaxies in the Universe. Whoo, what a task that is.

Regardless of your astronomical understanding of black holes, dark matter, or dark energy; if you’d like to humble yourself, blow your mind, or you’re just curious, head on over to this site and check out the zoomable picture of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field You won’t regret it.

I’m certain there are other life forms in the Universe. We may never contact them and they may never contact us, but the odds are simply astounding.

This image single handedly made me add Physics as a major, with the intent to study Astrophysics with Computer Science in Graduate School.