Thu, 31 Mar 2005

Ultra Light Weight Backpacking
Camping! Camping! The snow is melting and my thoughts are turning to camping. Diana and I are going to try to get a night in this spring, before black fly season. I’ve never camped in spring temperatures before and I’m eager to try it out. After the winter cabin experience, my thoughts have turned to ways to make my pack lighter. I’m not interested in deprivation while camping, but, for sure, I only want to carry things I want and need, rather than things I never use. The ‘big three’ when it comes to weight are the tent, backpack and sleeping bag. With that said, my big bugaboo from camping last year was carrying in (and out) excess consumables- food, batteries, cooking supplies, toiletries. This site has some interesting calculations on how much food a person needs while camping. Sounds like he should know, since he has tried camping with *no food*. I’m not doing that!

posted at: 12:56 | path: /living | link

Tue, 29 Mar 2005

Summary Sheet for rules of exponents
A nice summary sheet for rules of exponents and factoring polynomials

posted at: 11:26 | path: /work | link

College Algebra Tutorials
This site has a number of nice tutorials on algebra topics, like exponents, radicals, and simplifying polynomials. It gives the rules and examples using the rules.

posted at: 11:20 | path: /work | link

Giving Out Receipts
I’m trying to figure out how to give out receipts for my tutoring business. This page looked promising, but the whole site is so slow I was unable to get to any other page. I’ll try again later. While looking for other sites, I did find this page, which has a bunch of useful looking forms for businesses on it.

posted at: 11:07 | path: /work | link

Thu, 24 Mar 2005

3D Tracking Software by Grunbaum
This 3D Tracking Software could come in handy for my thesis project.

posted at: 16:09 | path: /school | link

Giuseppe Peano
Giuseppe Peano was a mathematician who devised a formal system for defining or deriving number systems. His biograpy is quite interesting. The person writing the biography seems to see a serious disconnect between his earlier and later work but it seems connected to me. I have often wished for a book containing all of the mathematical facts and I think it is strange that such a thing doesn’t exist (or, if Peano was successful, exists but is ignored).

posted at: 11:55 | path: /living | link

Works for integers too
Here’s the same treatment for integers.

posted at: 11:19 | path: /living | link

Do Imaginary Numbers Really Exist?
I’m still working on the imaginary numbers idea. I don’t agree with the line that many mathematicians and philosophers take that numbers actually exist in the world. I think they are a useful conceptual system that we have created to enhance our understanding of the world. With that said, I think that the pages on this site, in particular the Imaginary Numbers- How to show they exist link, finally do a good job of explaining how there can be a number such that i*i = -1. It’s all about how you define multiplication!

posted at: 11:12 | path: /living | link

Wed, 23 Mar 2005

Simplifying Quadratic Expressions
It would be nice if there was an algorithm to simplify any quadratic expressions. Actually, there probably is, but it is probably quite complicated. In the meantime, I will have to be satisfied with some heuristics. This site has a useful way of setting up the relevant information in a table. This site has some good tips for completing the square and pulling out common factors. The Dr. Math site also has a good e-mail reply that explains an alternate way to pull out factors. And here is an e-mail response that confirms my suspicions about there being a logical way to factor polynomials.

posted at: 16:42 | path: /living | link

Tue, 22 Mar 2005

History of Complex Numbers
This site has a nice discussion of the math history leading up to the use of complex numbers (and negative numbers as well). I find that knowing the history of math is very helpful in understanding mathematical concepts.

posted at: 15:58 | path: /work | link

Imaginary Numbers
Imaginary numbers used to bug me. I didn’t get how you could have a number the square of which was -1. Now, however, I view math as more of a human invention than some sort of truth about the world, so the number i doesn’t bother me as much. Here’s a brief discussion on what i is and how it came to be.

posted at: 15:48 | path: /work | link

Sat, 19 Mar 2005

How to make great gravy
Mmmm. Gravy. Everyone has their own ideas about how to make it. I thought the suggestions on the fabulous foods cooking school website were pretty good.

posted at: 15:59 | path: /living | link

Freecycle
People have started using the internet to swap their stuff. Freecycle has groups going all over North America. Their Yahoo group is here. I like this idea. I think smaller groups of people who know each other could also do this using Wikis. And- they could do it for stuff they didn’t mind people borrowing, too.

posted at: 12:01 | path: /living | link

Business Plans
I thought I posted some information on my blog a while ago about starting a business in Ontario but I can’t find any entries on that. Maybe it was pre-blog. The reason I’m interested is that I want to do some tutoring and I thought it would be good experience to set the tutoring up as a business, with a business plan and a registered name and all that. With that in mind Here’s a page from the Ontario government that discusses what needs to be in a business plan. Here’s a page that provides some sample business plans.

posted at: 11:56 | path: /work | link

Tue, 15 Mar 2005

Convolution of a Function
I’m trying to understand a mathematical model of a fish school by Adioui et al. Their model involves a mathematical operations called a convolution, which is new to me.

posted at: 17:23 | path: /school | link

Studying Math
I’ve learned a lot about studying math by tutoring math. This page nicely sums up much of what I have learned. I would also add that to get the most out of studying you need to do the right sort of problem at the right time. If you just do a bunch of math problems for the sake of doing the problems, after you’ve read the chapter, you will get something out of the experience, I’m sure, but if you do them for a particular reason when you are feeling a particular motivation (for example if you are motivated to practice a basic skill because you’ve just learned that you need it in order to be able to do something more complicated) then you will get more out of them. I think a lot of doing well in math is digging up the particular motivations you need to get the material stuck and organized in your head. That can be really challenging!

posted at: 12:10 | path: /work | link

Mon, 14 Mar 2005

Vegetarian Marathoners
I’m not a vegetarian but I like to know the vegetarian option. I was doing some exercise today and it led me to wonder what advice nutritionists have for vegetarians who are training for a sporting event or are generally quite physically active. Here’s some advice for vegetarian marathoners.

posted at: 17:31 | path: /living | link

Sun, 13 Mar 2005

Cooking for engineers
I was looking for information on the smoking point of fats and oils because I want to make roast potatoes (guess who’s getting those tonight :). There are interesting variations on roast potatoes. Some recipes advocate roasting at a high temperature (450+) but this requires a high smoking point fat or oil, which is why these recipes tend to advocate lard. ‘Healthy recipes’ call for roasting the potatoes at low temperatures (usually around 350). They have to, because olive oil has a lower smoking point (its actual smoking point depends on how it is refined, but it can be as low as 320 or as high as 420).

While looking for this information I came across the neat Cooking for engineers site. Their tag line: “Have an analytical mind? Like to cook? This is the site to read!”

posted at: 12:12 | path: /living | link

Aloe Vera Gel, Protein Content
This abstract did have some information about the protein content. Based on this, very roughly, there’s about .21g of protein in 100g of aloe vera gel. That’s .21%. For comparison, soy sauce has between 2 and 11 %, depending on which type you use (which also suggests that if you want to have a protein rinse using soy sauce, you need to pay attention to the type of soy sauce you use).

posted at: 11:49 | path: /living | link

Aloe Vera- it has lots of stuff in it
Keltie and I were talking about Aloe Vera the other day, in the context of hair care. It makes a very nice hair gel. Keltie was wondering, however, how much protein it has in because protein makes hair crunchy if applied in too large quantities, where the ‘too large quantity’ varies with your hair type. I was curious about the chemical makeup of aloe vera but I haven’t had too much luck in determining its protein content. This site does have some information, and indicates that it does contain some proteins, but it’s hard to say how accurate the information is. It seems difficult to get any straight ‘scientific’ information on this plant- most of the sites just want to go on and on about the wonderous healing powers and nutritional benefits of aloe vera.

posted at: 10:48 | path: /living | link

Fri, 11 Mar 2005

Something Completely Different- Amazing Optical Illusions
Man- all of this nutrition stuff has started to make my head spin. So- speaking of spinning- here’s something different. A website with amazing and beautiful optical illusions. These are simply unbelievable! The pictures move without moving.

posted at: 12:47 | path: /living | link

Nutrition Data Website
I’ve just spent a lot of time looking for websites that have nutrition analyses for particular foods. If I had found this website earlier, I wouldn’t have spent nearly as much time finding the info I wanted. It contains full nutrient breakdowns of large numbers of foods. Much easier than using that excel spreadsheet that I have saved… somewhere…

posted at: 12:25 | path: /living | link

World’s Healthiest Foods
Now that I’ve done all of this abstract nutritional research, I’m trying to translate what it means into something concrete that I can apply to my daily diet. While doing that, I came across this neat website that is aimed at promoting the ‘world’s most healthiest foods’. Looking at the list I think they are actually promoting ‘healthy foods that North Americans have heard of and like to eat’ but it still seems like a fun website.

posted at: 11:52 | path: /living | link

Mary Enig- Vegetable Fat Conspiracy
One of the people who wrote the discussion of fats in the last blog entry is Mary Enig. Here’s a brief bio. Much of the pro coconut oil information can be traced back to her.

posted at: 09:44 | path: /living | link

Thu, 10 Mar 2005

The truth about saturated fats?
In the dietary world, where there is a nay, there is invariably a yay. Where there is a “this is bad for you” there is invariably a “this is good for you” (the only exception to this seems to be trans fats. They’re just bad bad bad). In the case of saturated fats, the coconut growers want to argue that not all saturated fats are created equal and that coconut oil (98% saturated fat) has a bad wrap. I have absolutely no idea if there is any truth in this. Obviously the coconut growers are a bit biased. But, for the record, here is an argument for the saturated fat in coconut being good for you. I have to admit that I’m biased too, since I love coconut milk.

At the very least, the discussion of the different types of fats is interesting.

posted at: 20:58 | path: /living | link

GL studies
I’m finding this topic really interesting. Here’s a discussion from the Linus Pauling Institute about the findings of studies done to discern the effect of GL on diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and cancer. It had fairly large effects on some of these (diabetes), some effects on some (obesity and caridovascular disease) and little or no effect on others (cancer).

posted at: 18:43 | path: /living | link

Good GL/GI chart
David Mendosa has created an easy to read two dimensional chart that lets a person pull out the needed information about which foods are good to focus on, in terms of GI and GL.

posted at: 18:32 | path: /living | link

Glycemic Load
It seems like the concept of Glycemic Load is most useful, since it looks not just at the type of carbohydrates but at how much of them are present in the food. Here’s a fairly lengthy list of the glycemic load of foods. The Sydney University database also provides glycemic load information.

posted at: 17:44 | path: /living | link

Dietary requirements are never simple
Although the glycemic index sounds like a good step beyond simply dividing carbohydrates into simple and complex carbohydrates, according to this article the concept of GI is, itself, too simple, for various reasons. I think the best point to take away from the article is not that the GI isn’t useful, but simply that the body’s response to food is very complex. You need to consider more than just one variable. In this case, eating protein causes the body to increase its levels of insulin, which means it removes the sugar in the blood quickly, which in turn means that eating a high protien food with lots of quickly broken down carbohydrates might result in a lower blood sugar level than eating a low protein food containing carbohydrates that get broken down more slowly. However, this doesn’t necessarily change the general conclusion that eating low GI as opposed to high GI foods will, on average, keep your blood sugar levels at more consistent levels.

posted at: 17:20 | path: /living | link

Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load
Nutrition Australia provides some further information on how the glycemic index of a food is calculated, what is considered a high GI and a low GI and also discusses a related concept called the Glycemic Load (which takes into account how much of something you eat, in addition to what it is that you eat). The Australians seem to be quite into the whole idea. The University of Sydney has provided a searchable database of the glycemic indexes of foods.

posted at: 17:09 | path: /living | link

High Glycemic Foods and Low Glycemic Foods
I feel like, after several passes in this blog, I’m starting to get a good feel for the fat situation. Today I began thinking again about carbohydrates because I know that it’s not a good idea to get all calories from fat, which means that people need to get some of their calories from carbohydrates. At the moment I know enough about carbohydrates to know that not all cabohydrates are created equal. And recently I’ve heard the term ‘glycemic index’ bandied around with greater frequency.

According to this site, the glycemic index indicates how quickly a food gets convereted into blood sugar by your body. I’ve heard of simple and complex carbohydrates before, and not surprisingly simple carbohydrates in a food tend to lead to a high glycemic index for that food, since they already are sugars. However, the break down isn’t quite that simple. Some complex carbohydrate filled foods still have high glycemic indexes because the body breaks down the complex carbohydrates easily.

posted at: 16:54 | path: /living | link

Wed, 09 Mar 2005

Vegetarians and Omega-3 Fatty Acids
This is a follow up to my earlier post about problems getting essential fatty acids (EFA) from fish. This article considers this issue from the perspective of vegetarians getting enough Omega-3 fatty acid.

posted at: 20:54 | path: /living | link

Gut Loading
Sometimes I think that I should put a ‘disgusting warning’ on some of my blog entries. Like the entries on medlars (bletting). I should say that I don’t put anything in my blog that I find disgusting, at least.

My recent research on fat composition in animals indicates that the diet of the animal itself is important when it comes to determining the compostion of the animal (not too surprising when you put it that way). In the case of larger animals like beef and chicken, eating greens (grass, etc.) rather than grains results in animals that have more omega-3 fat than omega-6 fat and also less saturated fat. In thinking about bugs, I figured the same might be true. Consequently, I was quite interested to learn about gut-loading, in connection with feeding mealworms and crickets to reptiles. The idea is that you improve the health of the reptiles by feeding their food, the bugs, with lots of nutritious veggies and mineral supplements. I figure that this would be good for people eating the bugs, too. Here’s a suggested recipe that you can feed mealworms and crickets that they will like and that will make them tasty and nutritious.

I guess that wasn’t too disgusting. Maybe it’s just the term- ‘gut-loading’- that sounds bad.

posted at: 20:46 | path: /living | link

Insect foods of original north americans
Cotinuing on the insects as food topic, here’s an interesting article on insect use among the First nations, and the reactions that Europeans had to this food source.

posted at: 19:16 | path: /living | link

Raising mealworms and crickets
I told Colin that I wanted to get a chicken or two for our new house. The problem is that it is illegal to own chickens in Ottawa. In some cities they allow individuals to keep a small number of chickens (two or three) but not here. I think this is a bit short sited. In any case, it isn’t illegal to keep bugs, so I might have to start raising mealworms or crickets, instead. If I had a chicken I could feed them to the chicken, but if I can’t have a chicken I might have to feed them to myself. I do think eggs would be preferable, but what can you do?

posted at: 18:44 | path: /living | link

Eating fatty insects
I’m happy when two of my interests collide. In this case the interests are edible insects and types of fat in foods. I’m intrigued by the idea of eating insects and I know they are supposed to be high in protein and fat. While researching omega-3 fatty acids and other types of fats, I began to wonder what sort of fat insects have. According to the food insects newsletter, vol IV, no 1, insects are similar to fish in terms of the type of fat they have, but the article is a bit dense so it’s hard to draw more detailed conclusions from it at first glance.

posted at: 18:41 | path: /living | link

Tue, 08 Mar 2005

Biotin and moisturizers
According to this site, it’s biotin that is important for strong nails. I knew a bit about biotin already, from the Long Hair Community- it’s also good for your hair. However, Colin’s problem might be that his nails are actually strong but also dry. In that case, he can solve the problem by applying a moisturizer.

posted at: 23:40 | path: /living | link

Vitamin K
I told Colin today that having enough Vitamin K would help him have strong nails. He said that it sounds like a made up vitamin. As it turns out, vitamin K is a real vitamin. However, I was wrong about the nails, at least according to this site which says that you need vitamin K for strong bones, but not nails. Colin has nothing to worry about on the vitamin K front because it is present in cheese.

posted at: 23:09 | path: /living | link

Eat Wild
Here’s a list of places in Canada where you can get grass fed meat.

posted at: 19:18 | path: /living | link

Wild Game
A while ago I read something on the internet that claimed that wild game was better for you than grain fed animals. It didn’t exactly say why so I didn’t give it much thought. However, in looking into sources of Omega-3 fatty acids, I’ve found some further information on the topic.

posted at: 19:01 | path: /living | link

Omega-3 and mercury
Omega-3 acids are essential fatty acids. The body needs them, and can’t make them itself. However, it appears that there aren’t too many sources of Omega-3 fatty acids. People usually list fish, walnuts and some green vegetables as being the main sources. I’m inclined to think this isn’t entirely comprehensive, since I think there are people living in the desert who probably don’t eat these items and they must be getting their Omega-3’s from somewhere. In any case, one of the issues is that fish sources are now so contaminated by mercury, PCBs and other chemicals that it is no longer safe to eat them. However, this article has some useful suggestions about how to balance out the good (consumption of Omega-3 fatty acids) with the bad (consumption of mercury and PCBs).

posted at: 18:41 | path: /living | link

Mon, 07 Mar 2005

Unix Command Line 101
It’s been a long time since I started using the unix command line. And yet, it’s only been recently that I feel like I’m starting to understand ‘the shell’. This is a bit embarassing. I think I’ve reached a milestone, though, because for the first time today I thought, “Hmmm… I can do that more easily if I chain multiple commands together on a single command line.”

:o

Here’s a useful command line reference page.

posted at: 22:32 | path: /school | link

‘Spongers’
I recently watched a surfing movie, which is no doubt responsible for my current maritime thoughts. I’m not interested in surfing, but I like ‘body surfing’- which is to say, just riding the waves with your body- so I’ve often thought that boogie boarding would be enjoyable. As you can tell from this site, it’s not as ‘cool’ as surfing ;).

posted at: 16:41 | path: /living | link

The Warmest Beach in Nova Scotia
As some people know, there is a long standing tradition among Nova Scotians to make various claims about “The warmest beach in Nova Scotia”. The location of this beach varies considerably. Most notably, it is never the beach a person is currently at. I realized today that, with the help of the internet, I might be able to find more information about this elusive beach. The Nova Scotia Lifeguard Service provides some useful information about supervised beaches but they are a bit coy about the average water temperature at these beaches. They do note that the temperature at Rissers is ‘moderate’. The Provincial Parks website provides this map of beaches, but doesn’t even deign to mention water temperature.

The Atlantic Climate Centre is a bit more forthcoming on this page, although it discusses water temperatures off-shore. I do think that this statement is telling: “Nova Scotia’s north coast is exposed to Gulf waters which, in late August, have a maximum surface temperature of 18C”. The Gulf stream is a source of warm water, by the way.

18 degrees Celsius is 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit. According to this wet suit buying guide: “A full suit is needed for water temperatures below 65F. Depending on whether you feel the cold or not, or just how cold the water will be you will either need a 4/3mm or a 5/3mm wetsuit. A 5/3mm suit will be needed if the temperatures get below 60F.”

The search continues…

posted at: 15:33 | path: /living | link

Perl Hash Howto
Hashes are a useful data construct that lets you look up one value based on another value. For example, you could use a hash to store the number of bananas and oranges and pears you have by saying my_fruit_hash{bananas}=10, my_fruit_hash{oranges}=6 and my_fruit_hash{pears}=18 (this is not intended to be correct syntax for any particular language). Then you can look up the number of bananas you have by asking for my_fruit_hash{bananas}. This is easier than assigning the number ‘2’ to bananas and then having to remember that in your program to find out the number of bananas you need to look at array 2. In any case, this link tells you how to do things with hashes when you are programming in perl.

posted at: 11:37 | path: /school | link

Sun, 06 Mar 2005

Geek Girls Database Tutorial
Rose Vines has created a Geek Girls website. It has various tutorials and information on various computer topics. Specifically of interest to me, it has a useful tutorial on database creation

posted at: 14:49 | path: /school | link

Sat, 05 Mar 2005

Voiclessness: Narcissism
An interesting personality disorder with some superficial similarities to the autism spectrum is the narcissism spectrum. There are some strange sites on narcissism out there (some run by self-admitted narcissits) but I think this page presents the idea reasonably.

posted at: 12:39 | path: /living | link

All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.