Cool Tools

One of my favorite websites, Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools. Like its name suggests it's a listing of cool tools. Some I like, some not so much. But this is where I found out about my previously mentioned RailRiders. honestly, when I need something a bit unusual this is one of the places I look first.

Great Clothing

I've been buying a lot (ok, all) of my clothing from RailRiders recently. It's all Nylon fabrics, which may not be the classiest thing, but they're comfortable, sturdy, and I love 'em. Expensive, but worth it. Mostly for outdoors enthusiasts, but since I routinely refuse to come in out of the rain anyway...

Science Supplies

While I'm going on about cool websites, I rather like United Nuclear Scientific Equipment & Supplies. Vaugely related to the previous topic, because I keep thinking I want one of their lab glassware kits for the kitchen. Honestly, lab glassware's much better designed than most kitchen glassware.

Cool knives

Saw these Chef Knives from New West Knifeworks at the holiday shops at Bryant Park. Beautiful damascus chef knives. Really great looking, and even look functional. Sadly, out of my price range. (Or, rather, more than I'm willing to pay to have a pretty chef knfe when an equally functional one is less). Bryant Park is pretty cool though.

Spetroscopy and quantum mechanics.

Been thinking about how to write a quantum mechanics textbook. I've grown increasingly disappointed with the way most are written. Most start with a historical overview of how the theory was developed, then work through more and more complicated wavefunctions, and then at the end, if there's time, cram in a little bit of the stuff you actually need to do to do something useful with quantum mechanics.

For some reason, this doesn't work for me. I'd like to see one that starts off right away with a practical discussion of the theoretical framework (and notation) we actually use. I think the minimum background for that is just a discussion of spectroscopy. The existence of line spectra allows one to start with a notion of quantized light, and quantized states (a discussion of the photoelectric effect might also be needed). Then once you have states, you can immediately introduce dirac notation. Later, once you've discussed operators, expectation values, eigenvalues, eigenfunctions, superposition of wavefunctions, transition dipoles, and all the linear algebra like bits that give the "big picture" view, if there's time, you can muck about with the calculus to show how to calculate matrix elements.

Not my most approachable blog topic, but hey, trying to get into updating thsi thing regularly, and it was something I've been musing.

Happy things

You know, a world with Serenity in it is better. I'm feeling happier, and well, more serene for having watched it. Yay.