Ode to the fx-991MS

A dog may be a shepherd’s best companion, a wallet is a bankers best friend, and a pen is a writer’s best tool. To an engineering student the calculator is what the dog, wallet, and pen are to their respective owners.

The journey began sometime late in high school when I needed a new calculator. I was having trouble with statistics and noticed a new calculator on the shelves that promised to do statistics, matrices, and much more. It was the Casio fx-991MS, and it was love at first sight.

The Casio promised to be a lot more that what was mentioned on the box. It made my test, and exams easier in high school, and it proved to be just as effective during university.

I clearly remember an electrical circuits course we had during first year. Imaginary numbers were a pain in the ass to do arithmetic with, and phasors were things we had to deal with in physics and circuits. Of course I didn’t have a problem with all those imaginary numbers thanks to my Casio. When the class discovered the abilities of the Casio, I estimate over 80% of the class trashed their Sharp, Texas Instruments, and whatever other crappy calculator they had and made the move to the fx-991MS… doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?

The Casio became the talk of the class (I’m not kidding) and those with Casios would show off the abilities of the calculator to the non-believers. I have to say that the non-believers truly missed out on many time saving tricks including:

• Solving equations with 2 and 3 unknowns
• Solving order 2 and 3 equations
• Imbedded BEDMAS rules
• Calculating the inverse of a 3X3 matrix
• Conversion between base 10, binary, hex, and oct
• Tons of statistical functions
• Ability to type equations and quickly perform iterations
• Integration using Simpson’s rule (although this one take about a minute to process)

There are other features of course, but the first few are by far the most time saving, especially in an exam situation.

My Casio will travel to work with me, and the second one (I have 3..you know, for emergencies and such) will stay on my desk. Every now and then I plan on giving it a little work out, so it stays sharp, so to speak.

For the makers of the fx-991MS I say thank you, using the calculator has been a pleasure. The Casio fx-991MS will always be my favourite calculator.

Call animal control.. there's a bear in the neighbourhood

This week is my reading week. Not much reading has been happening, as usual. I have been dinking around watching movies, reading the odd non-school related book, and replying to a million emails.

This morning as I made my way to the kitchen from my bedroom, my mom informed that my dad with his detective skills had discovered that a bear was lurking in the neighborhood. He apparently saw footprints on the sidewalk early in the morning, which in his opinion resembled a bear’s foot print. I didn’t believe that it was true, but my mom went on describing to me the size of the footprint and the way it looked. There are bears in Ontario, but they’re usually up north, and when a bear happened to hang around in a nearby city it was because he escaped from a zoo.

During the evening my dad went on describing the footprint, and assuring me that he was certain a bear hanging around in the neighbourhood. He then told me that he took pictures of the foot print and suggested I look at them.

Exhibit A - "Bear footprint"

I looked at the picture and the shape of the footprint puzzled me. It didn’t look like anything I have seen before, and it was too large to be that of a dog. So, with family behind me I started searching Google Images of footprints of animals that live around here. First to remove doubts I searched for a bear's footprint.

Bear footprint

The raccoon was a negative.

Raccoon footprint

We tried dog, and that wasn’t even close. Skunk came next and proved to be a negative as well.

Skunk footprint

Finally, in a moment of brilliance my brother suggested “bunny.”

to make sure I looked at another..

Surely enough the foot-prints matched, and I felt like Cinderella trying on her glass shoe. The fit was indisputable, and the case was closed. We can all sleep comfortably tonight thanks to Google Images, and a little boy’s imagination.

Sir Mix-A-Lot had a point after all

"I like big butts and I cannot lie" are the lyrics of a classic song, but according to latest research, if your dad was like Sir Mix-A-Lot then chances are you're smarter than average. Read on...

CURVIER women may have smart children because hip fat contains polyunsaturated fatty acids critical for the development of the fetus's brain.

Using data from the US National Center for Health Statistics, William Lassek at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Steven Gaulin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, found a child's performance in cognition tests was linked to their mother's waist-hip ratio, a proxy for how much fat she stores on her hips. [source]

Facebook Wars

Every year people across the globe buy in to the myth that Mars will appear as large as the moon in the night sky. And every year I have arguments with people that such an event will never occur. I once gave somebody solid proof of the impossibility of the event (a link from NASA’s website), and she refused to believe what I told her. She shrugged it off saying something along the line of “who knows? it may happen, I’m still going to look up on that night.” This year is no different, but rather than seeing posts about it, I’m witnessing the frenzy on Facebook.

One girl created an event stating that the celestial event will occur on August 27th, which happens to be two days before her birthday. She was just a bit shy from suggesting that Mars crept closer to Earth just for her birthday. At the moment there are hundreds of “confirmed attendance” RSVP’s, and many replied with apologies along the lines of “I’m going to be in the US on that day,” one girl apologized saying that she was going to be in Montreal that night. Because as we all know the night sky in Montreal is drastically different than that of Toronto’s. On the other hand, and to be fair, I have seen many comments by people saying that this event is a hoax, although their attempts at telling the truth are being looked at as “party pooper” behaviour.

I’m not bothered by the fact that these people are idiots. Idiots are a fact of life, you have to learn to deal with them. What bothers me is the lack of critical thinking. Even if a person hears about this event, they should be able to reason that such a thing will not happen. First of all for Mars to appear large on that single day would mean that Mars has to accelerate towards Earth, leaving its orbit behind (after all, it’s the girls birthday), make an appearance next to the moon, and then quickly jet back into orbit. But since that sounds physically impossible I think another explanation might have to do. What if god held a giant magnifier somewhere between Toronto and Mars, wouldn’t ha make Mars appear larger? Or maybe god has a lot of time on his hand, and he decided to make another Mars (a birthday gift), and place it in orbit around Earth for a day. Other possibilities also include: hanging a giant poster of Mars in the sky, and projecting a picture of Mars against the sky. We can also never forget the possibility that Moon might be going to a Halloween party, and decided to dress up like Mars on that particular night. I can probably think of a few other possibilities for the event might occur, but I’ll leave that for your imagination.

So, in retaliation to the Facebook event, and to “poop the party,” so to speak, I started a Facebook group named “I think anybody who believes Mars will be as big the moon is an idiot.” I sent the invitation to many people on my friends list, including friend’s who planned on attending the “event.” The response for the group has been overwhelming; at the time of writing I have 13 members and 8 wall posts. One person in the group is a converted believer, as she bravely admitted. Another, thanked me for creating the group. To those people I say, thank YOU. It feels damn great to be an educator and to set people on the right path.

You know you're an engineer if...

I have 6 midterms this week. I have been doing so much math, that I’m literally dreaming of x’s and y’s. Lists like the ones below always put a smile on my face, especially because they’re so true… read on.

You know you’re an engineer if:

1. You have no life - and you can PROVE it mathematically.
3. You know vector calculus but you can't remember how to do long division.
5. You've actually used every single function on your graphing calculator.
9. You think in "math".
13. You laugh at jokes about mathematicians.
15. You can translate English into Binary.
16. You can't remember what's behind the door in the engineering building which says "Exit".
17. You have to bring a jacket with you, in the middle of summer, because there's a wind-chill factor in the lab.
18. You are completely addicted to caffeine.
19. You avoid doing anything because you don't want to contribute to the eventual heat-death of the universe.
20. You consider ANY non-engineering course "easy".
21. When your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to have accidentally determined its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe.
22. The "fun" center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use.
23. You'll assume that a "horse" is a "sphere" in order to make the math easier.
26. The salesperson at Circuit City can't answer any of your questions.
31. You have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work.
34. You spent more on your calculator than on your wedding ring.
35. You think that when people around you yawn, it's because they didn't get enough sleep.
37. You've ever calculated how much you make per second.
39. You understood more than five of these jokes.
40. You can't write unless the paper has both horizontal and vertical lines.
41. You make a copy of this list, and post it on your door (or your home page !)

I would like to add a few of my own..

You know the Greek alphabet more than the English alphabet

You can assign a physical unit to every letter in the English alphabet

You use phrases like “within an order of magnitude” and “to the nth degree” as part of your daily talk

You type on your calculators with two fingers

When faced with a tough partial differential equation, you start assuming everything as negligible.

technorati tags: engineering, funny, list, university

While we're on the topic...

All my post ideas recently have been the quite serious, time consuming type. As much as I like to think I can organize my time well, it seems like I'm always sleeping late, getting up early (for work), and chugging through the day with the aid of the magic liquid that is Coffee..

That being said, here's a picture I took from the plane when we made a pit stop in Aleppo.... well...to re-mahrook.... if you will

technorati tags: arabic, funny, plane, picture, fuel

Direct Idiom Translation

I think some of the funniest things for any bilingual person to do is to directly translate idioms from one language into another. So here’s my crude attempt at doing so..

Arabic Idiom: Ra2bti saddadeh (you can rely on me or I got your back)
Direct Translation: My neck is a cork

Arabic Idiom: 3ala rasi (It’s my pleasure)
Direct Translation: On my head

Arabic Idiom: Sa7a (bless you)
Direct Translation: Health

Arabic Idiom: ta3abak ra7a (a courteous way to say “no problem”)
Direct Translation: Your tiredness is comfort [to me]

Arabic Idiom: sho jab la jab (there’s no comparison)
Direct Translation: what brings to bring

Arabic Idiom: Il ird b3en immo ghazal (said to one who believes all that’s associated with him/her is the best)
Direct Translation: A monkey in his mother’s eye is a gazal

Arabic Idiom: mitl il sha3ra min al 3ajeen (said to note how easy something is to do)
Direct Translation: Like a hair out of dough

Arabic Idiom: tehriya bil hana (said to someone who’s showing you a new article of clothing or shoes they just bought)
Direct Translation: wear it out in happiness

Arabic Idiom: Mabrook (congratulations, a more common way of saying the idiom above)
Direct Translation: Blessed

Arabic Idiom: m7ammelni jmeleh (said to someone who did something good to you and keeps reminding you of it)
Direct Translation: Load me a beautiful

Arabic Idiom: Ma bisadi2 il khara gher la yara (said to someone who won’t believe what your saying to them)
Direct Translation: The shit won’t believe until he sees

Well, that’s all I got for now. I’m sure more will cross my mind, and perhaps some will comments with funny ones they thought of.

technorati tags: langauge, arabic, english, idioms, translation, idiom