harleyk

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I love this dance. For its movement, for its expression with a few sketched, simple lines, I think this work is beautiful. It reminds me of my relationship. I have a clumsy ballroom dance, but I feel my life dance with the women I love is more graceful.

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Here’s a link to a video detailing how it was made. Short version: a BYU artist filmed a couple dancing. He sketched 24 frames for every second. 3 minute video = 180 sec * 24 = 4320 sketches

Thought of You – Behind the Scenes Preview – ROUGH CUT from Cambell Christensen on Vimeo.

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Google has been quietly scanning and digitizing books. 5.2 million books. And this represents 11% of all books they hope to scan. The best part is that they’ve made this database publicly available. Now, anyone can search for the popularity or decline of words and phrases. This New York Times article does a good job outlining the significance of a pan-literary digital library.

Like a pink package with a bright red bow sitting on a doorstep mat that reads “This way for PhDs”, Google’s Book Ngram viewer is what left-brained humanists and number-crunching literarians have always dreamed of: a machine to read books and give answers.

Since I am neither human-y nor literary, I performed a search for the words that mean the most to me. A few friends that have kept me company throughout the years.

Model Organisms

Arabidopsis thaliana- plant

Drosophila melanogaster-fruit fly

Caenorhabditis elegans-nematode, worm

Mus musculus-mouse

Danio rerio-zebrafish

Not surprisingly, Drosophila research is more popular than any other model organism research around 1920. It sharply increases from about 1932 to 1940 probably due to Morgan and Sturtevant’s genetic research.

I don’t know why fruit fly and mouse popularity peaks shortly after 1980. I also can’t account for their decline in 1990.

All of these model organisms are small compared to the most studied model organism, Escherichia coli.

I also investigated the popularity of some of my current research projects.

Okay, enough science.

Whose name in my house is more popular?

Okay, it’s Anderson, but probably because it’s a last name.

Nextly(0.0000004%), I put in the common conjunctives like “and, or, but, yet”. Amazingly, “and” accounts for about 2% of all words in 500 billion. And, strangely, its popularity is declining. Maybe this is because we use more periods and we don’t connect our sentences together with as many semicolons? idk

Oh, and looks like  “Mormon” will one day be replaced with “LDS”, but not anytime soon.

Sadly, no book Google scanned mentions this website.

Have your own little looksee(0.0000012%) here. I think this would make a great dictionary. It’s the ultimate Scrabble resource. Surely, you can find any word in 500billion.

The popularity of the word Diva correlates with my wife’s birf. Coincidence, or blazon divaness?

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Thoughts return home around Christmas time, and mine certainly do too. I also think about Hungary. I served a two year mission there and I loved it. Every bit of it. The people. The place. The food.

I loved Christmastime because it might have been the first time I didn’t think about myself. I was too busy eating these:

and these:

You’re familiar with the mandarin oranges. You may not be familiar with Szaloncukor. I wouldn’t call them irresistible, but these little chocolate candies are like chips: you can’t eat just one and pretty soon you’ve forgotten why you started.

And still you continue to eat.

I discovered a website where you can by Szaloncukor and other Hungarian indulgences.

Hmmm, eats like home.

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BYU’s library is beautiful. Open, spacious, wood-paneled, the Harold B. Library is a great place to study and do research. Even after visiting and studying in the legendary university libraries of the East, I think BYU’s library shines brighter.

I miss it.

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Maxwell Robert King

Big, long on June 27th.

MR. K came yesterday in textbook-style delivery: fast, easy, and mostly painless–at least for me. He’s got freaky long toes and crow black hair. He’s puffy. He’s Budda. He’s asleep. He’s also massively hung. No, seriously. I’d insert some appropriate joke here but instead I’ll tell you he’s got a hydrocele testis or fluid in the testicles. The condition will probably disappear in a few weeks.

I don’t think he looks like his big brother.

Anderson                                                                      Max

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I talked about my love for this talk previously in a post. Now, there’s a video.

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Update:

It’s easy to give your Blogspot blog three columns.

1) Get into your blog settings.

2) Select “Design”

3) Goto “Layout”

4) Select a three column layout.

New Template Designer in Blogger makes it easy to give your blog the 3 columns it deserves.

Older method below.

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It’s easy to add a three column layout to your blogspot blog. Follow these steps:

1) Find a 3 column theme you wish to add by doing internet search or just go here. Save the xml file. For example, let’s say you want Minima White. Click it, save it, and download it to your desktop.

2) Goto your blog. Select “layout”. Click “Edit HTML”. Make sure the checkmark box is selected in the “Expand Widget Templates”. Goto the bottom and click “Save Template”. Next, goto the top and select “Download Full Template” (in blue). Save it to your desktop. The filename is usually funky like template-3489734857024.xml.

3) Next, click Browse next to “select Upload a template from a file on your hard drive:” Upload the new template file you saved in step 1.

Click “Preview” at the bottom to see your new 3-column layout.

4) Next, we’ll change the theme to be a little bit wider. This is a hard. Deselect the box in the “Expand Widget Templates”. Using the scroll bar, scroll down to the jibberish (it’s called html and it’s the guts of your site) until you see #header-wrapper. Locate width:. There should be a number next to it followed by px. In the minima white theme it’s 890. Change this to be 950. PX means pixels. Width: 890px means your header width is 890 pixels across. More pixels = more width.

Now locate #outer-wrapper. Change this width value (950 in this example) to the same width you set #header-wrapper.

Find #main-wrapper. Increase this value the same number of pixels you increased the #header-wrapper and #outer-wrapper values. In this example 950-890 = 60. Change from 410px to 470px. The #main-wrapper is the part where your posts go. You notice this will also get wider.

5) You’re done if you’re satisfied with the values above. However, it’s a good opportunity to see how your blog works now that the hood is up. Explore the look of your blog with different pixel values. Make sure to write the values down on a piece of paper before you begin and each time you change.

It’s no big deal if you mess up because all of your posts are saved, and you can always upload the new Minima White template you downloaded in step 1.

Caution: Increasing the width of your blog might mean that people who are still sporting the 13″ monitors may not be able to see your blog the same way you see it. Sometimes the blog doesn’t fit on the screen so it wraps around down at the bottom. It’s not a big deal with today’s wide-screen monitors, but you should know in case grandma complains.

Note: If you want to make a customized header you will need it to be the width of the pixels you set in #header-wrapper in step#4.

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I laugh and I cry.

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Dude, in case you haven’t heard: it snowed in DC this past weekend. It snowed a lot.

I was able to spend some time in doors away from school, work, and people. I was with the ones I love and I’ve come to the realization of five things.

1) I love the snow. I never could live in a state where it doesn’t snow (see-ya Arizona). Even when I have to dig my car out from under 2 feet of snow I love it (see-ya SoCal). Even when the threat level of skidding into oncoming traffic is nuclear white I can’t think of precipitation I’d rather drive in.

2) I hate housework. Leave me home alone for a few days and the house withers and dies. I should be ashamed of my entropic ways, but the clean-house process is not worth it.  There was nothing free about my free day today. I was a prisoner made to dance to the jailhouse rock of a capricious 2-year old and a hormonal wife. As far as my Preg-o-meter is dialed correctly, my wife is still 3 months away from nesting, yet I scrubbed like she was due yesterday. Spring cleaning came early despite DC white out conditions. Before you get all permalinky on me and reply comments like, “Whatevs, jerk, she’s carrying your baby,” and “She should clean you out to the curb,” please know I kid. Mildly.

Wendy does do a lot of stuff around the house when I’m not around but it doesn’t take a PhD to notice a proportion: the pregnanter my wife gets the harder I work. I am Winterella; just compare our lists.

My list:

bathroom floor, tub, toilet, bedroom, vacuum, child entertainment, dishes x 3, dishwasher x 2, kitchen floor

Her list:

Organize maternity wardrobe, blogging (notice the time stamp), come up with more stuff to clean

3) I love napping. Put a gun to my head and ask me to choose between death and the prospect of no napping and I would probably have to sleep on it. Napping is life. It is beauty draped in a snow-feather white blanket and tucked carefully into droopy eyelids. How can anyone choose to work a full day without one? The thought of a full-day’s work exhausts me. I know napping’s salubrious benefits, but health or no I must pay obesience to Lord Circadian Rhythm. Lest ye think I laze remember my biology may have something to do with it.

I once had a job. I once had a full-time job and periodically I would slip away when the world needed me most to a men’s bathroom shower stall to find a 3-foot vinyl dressing bench to catch a 20. Even now my current lab was selected not only on the excellence of the research, or the sanity of co-workers, or the availability of funding, but on my proximity to anything reclining or semi-plush carpeting. Just writing about it makes…me…so <yawn>…

…

4) I could play the gi’tar all day. All day long.

5) I love the fam. Nothing makes me happier than putting up with shinanigans and pots and pans esp. when they belong to these two:

 

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