In the last few months I somehow got sucked into reading George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books which include Game of Thrones, of which they made a recent TV series. I'm still not done (I'm somewhere in the 4th book) since I'm an impossibly slow reader and I'm usually reading two or three other books at once, but I'm really enjoying myself. One thing I really like about the series is how lived in that world feels. He managed to create levels and levels of culture, stories, geography, history that go along with the main plot lines. He describes many aspects of daily life and even the food in great detail. There's even a website dedicated to recreating the food described in the book series. I also enjoy reading the descriptions of the different cities and places, and I like the fact that the geography and culture of this world (does it have a name?) can roughly be superimposed onto medieval Europe and maybe the Middle East. Martin takes great pains to describe the rich heraldic symbols of the various houses that have a role in shaping the plot, and I always assumed that they were somewhat fanciful versions of actual heraldry used in the middle ages. Recently, a friend showed me a link to an exhibit of various illustrated books from Flanders made during the late medieval period, and the website for the exhibition has a nice series of interactive electronic books, which are scans of some of the original manuscripts. The first of these books is a so-called Armorial, or book of heraldry depicting the various symbols, helmet and costumes worn by the various knights. And they're amazing, they have all sorts of crazy stuff, like the dude with the giant fish or lion helmet. There's even one fellow with a chicken on his helmet. I certainly couldn't imagine going to war with that shit on my head. If I were a knight I wonder what my symbol would be? A giant neuron on a background of whining undergrads? A laptop? I could simply then challenge grant and paper reviewers to swordfights in lieu of peer review. These would also make much better covers for Martin's books than the inexplicably ugly ones he (or his publisher) chose. Here are some of my favorites (including the chicken knight):

Chicken Knight

Lion Knight

Fish Knight

Valentine's Day Knight

I saw this old grizzled prof go into the building where I teach the other day. He had a grey beard and was wearing an old wool sweater with moth holes, a tweed jacket, rumpled khakhis and brand new running shoes. He had his worn, Land's End canvas briefcase and was wearing a teal beret with matching gloves. He really looked like he didn't give a shit about anything. And I thought "Yeah, he's cool."

I don't really think I'm a coffee snob, because I will pretty much drink any coffee swill that's put in front of me. That being said, I do like good coffee, and good espresso in particular. Back when I started my postdoc I decided to treat myself to a decent espresso machine and after some research I opted for one of those lever machines that look like some sort of steampunk contraption with chrome tubes, and knobs and buttons. After some research into pricing, etc. I trekked into Manhattan to buy it and returned home with this beauty:

Mine's a lot greasier and battle-scarred.

I had been warned that these lever machines were temperamental and unforgiving and that everything had to be just right before you could pull a decent shot of espresso. After experimenting with multiple beans, roasts, grinders and tampers (and drinking lots of test shots) I finally came up with a fairly reliable formula and have been drinking delicious espressos for the last 10 years or so. Last month, however, my espresso world was turned upside-down. First the grinder broke. It was actually a somewhat inexpensive grinder that just so happened to grind the beans fine enough for my machine, something that much more expensive grinders do. I had bought some new beans and they were so oily that they gummed up the grinder and blew its motor (I think, I haven't attempted to repair it). So I figured, well, the grinder can't last forever, so I bought a newer version of the same grinder. Of course it was not nearly as good, and the grind did not seem to be quite fine enough, and I was in the process of doing some adjustments when my espresso machine decided to break. The way the machine works is that you have a lever which you lift, it lets hot water into a chamber and when you pull the lever down it pushes a piston down that forces the water through the coffee grounds. Well, now, whenever I pulled the lever, it would not generate any pressure. I knew that the piston had gaskets around it and likely these just had to be replaced. This had happened once before and when I looked into getting the replacement gaskets I also found the parts diagram for the machine and was confronted with this:

That's a lot of parts!

It did not look promising, so I sent it all the way to faraway Seattle to be repaired. This time, when the gaskets blew, I decided not to be daunted by the complicated diagram and go for it. So I ordered a gasket kit, got a tool I didn't have from Home Depot and set off to work, with the eager help of my 6 year-old son. We first removed the group head (the part where the coffee grounds go and where the piston and lever sits) and I gave my son the job of scrubbing the gooey residue off of all the metal parts. We removed the main gasket and the filter screen, undid the lever and pushed the piston through. At this point I looked at all the little parts and panicked. What have I done? How is all this going to go back together? Where did that little ring come from? But it was too late, there was only one way now, and it was forward. And we found that the problem wasn't the gaskets, but rather that the piston itself (which has little grooves to hold the gaskets) was made of plastic (!) and was cracked.

The cracked piston, the shiny new piston.

Except for a few knobs and handles, this machine is made almost entirely of metal. Why would they make the part of the machine that receives the most stress out of plastic? I'm sure it was hard plastic, but over the years it looks like it got brittle and finally cracked. I blame the super oily coffee beans which did in my grinder. Back on the internet looking for the missing part, I found out that now they make it out of brass instead of plastic. Except all the places that sell it  appeared to be sold out. Finally I found a place that had the piston in stock (quite expensively) along with parts for all sorts of coffee and slushie machines, put in an order and waited for the part to arrive. A few days later, the piston arrives!! It took a while to get all the gaskets to sit right, I added a little dab of silicone grease to make things glide nicely, and miraculously everything went back together with no extra parts hanging around (I think). And, just like that, we're back in business!

Some 'spresso coming up!

I'm still not terrible happy with the new grinder, but apparently you can adjust the burrs a bit, and maybe I can get the old one to work again. It's kind of funny how I'm always so reluctant to take apart any appliances/electronics at home but in the lab I'm all about "lets screw this very expensive piece of equipment/microscope open and see what we can get it to do". My lab is covered with kludged-together pieces of equipment, often held together by duct tape, aluminum foil and cardboard boxes. I guess lab equipment somehow seems more accessible and open, while many home appliances are basically impossible to break into without breaking the case. We had this toaster that stopped working about a month ago and just to open it up was a major undertaking; it was basically impossible to do without damaging the outer case. It turned out it was simply a loose contact, but the thing was impossible to put back together. My wife didn't want one of the kids electrocuted by the toaster so she made me throw it out. The nice thing about my espresso machine is that it's got so many exposed bolts and screws, that it's just too tempting not to take it apart. Almost like an old steam engine, or something. Now, if only I could learn to fix the fucking leaf blower.

So I'm still here. I've just been busy! There's been a grant to write, classes to teach, lines of undergrads wanting to talk to me, papers to revise, turnover in the lab, equipment breaking and getting fixed, all stuff that takes my attention away from here. Finally this weekend we were able to get away for a bit, then come back and relax, watch the Superbowl and dismantle my espresso machine. Obviously the lack of decent espressos has been making me work slower. But now that the semester is in the groove, hopefully I can get back with new and exciting posts.

Today I heard from someone who was complaining that Arial is an abomination. I'm not the biggest fan of Arial either, but I'm superstitious, and most of my successful grant proposals have been written in Arial. So I keep using it. In general I don't like sans serif type, but somehow they never seem to work in grant proposals for me. Manuscripts, that's another story. There I've had luck with a mix of stuff. But back to Arial. Arial was based on the much storied Helvetica, designed in the 1950's. Arial was a knockoff and was one of the fonts bundled in Microsoft Windows 3. While there are differences when you compare both fonts side by side, to me it is very hard to tell, and I bet the same for most folks.

So here's a challenge. Download the linked PDF file and (without cheating) tell me which paragraph is in Arial, and which in Helvetica.

There must be something interesting that could be done with all those discarded Christmas trees I passed on my walk to work today. Maybe an instant backyard magical forest for the kids? Bonfire? Late season sukkah? Nordic-themed soccer goalposts? Skinny totem poles? Rat hutch? Eco-friendly jousting poles?

So, 2012 is finally fucking here! Of course I will be ringing in the new year with a few grants to submit, preparing a couple of manuscripts (if the folks in my lab get around to writing them), teaching a large undergraduate course (with the help of my chicken), and overall busy stuff. Nevertheless, I've made a list of things I'd like to do in the new year. Of course things like spending quality time with my wonderful family, traveling, not procrastinating, etc. are obvious, so I did not explicitly put them on the list. My list is more of a plan of side projects, and since this is the season for making lists here it is:

1. Carve wooden masks

2. Build a tree-house

3. Smoke a salmon

4. Become proficient at fingerpicking

5. Write, illustrate, print and bind a book

6. Paint something large

7. Build a brick oven

8. Begin printmaking again

9. Build a robot (virtual or otherwise)

10. Make a totem pole

11. Build a sundial

Can I do all these things? Who knows. Some might get done, some might get ignored, some might take more than a year, but at least I'll try. Also, I figured there hasn't been any James Brown around here for a while, and he's got soul, and he's superbad. So enjoy this clip, complete with some robot dancing, pre-Michael Jackson:

Despite my carefully crafted holiday gift guide, I instead received this:

It's not totally random. A few years back we were driving in Maine and pulled into an old antique store. You know the type: an old barn stuffed with all sorts of old junk, from dusty accordions, to cast iron skillets to discarded taxidermy. In this store I saw this beautiful stuffed chicken which I totally wanted to get, but somehow I ended up not doing it and have regretted it since. Thus, supercool wife decided to, well, get me a taxidermy chicken.

He now resides in my office to keep me company. I can't wait until the students come back and start complaining about their grades. Then I can just lift up my hand and say "Nope, go tell it to the bird..."

So the holidays are rapidly approaching! And you have no idea what gifts to give your loved ones. Neither do I, but I do have an idea of the kinds of gifts I'd like to receive (hint, hint). So here it is, the first ever, Take it to the Bridge's holiday (or year-round) gift guide!!

Purkinje Cell - G.Dunn

Pencils

I love pencils. I think they make the ideal writing/drawing implement and love the feel of them on the page, especially soft dark pencils. Plus I always feel I take better notes and write better outlines when using pencil. I would be happy with a box of 4B Palominos. I also hear that their revived Blackwing 602's are nifty. That should keep me well stocked for the upcoming grant and manuscript writing season. Also, if you're into pens and other writing implement also be sure to check out this other awesome online store that sells Japanese writing implements.

Paper

Of course a nice pencil deserves nice paper. I love taking notes on graph paper, reminds me of my pimply-teen D&D playing phase. These French note pads are silky smooth and cool looking. I've never tried the notebooks, but they look like they have potential.

Cajal

I've been lusting for this book, "Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul", since I saw it at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. I didn't buy it because  I didn't feel like lugging it around the convention center or carrying it all the way back home (its a big book). I reproduces amazing hand-drawn images of neurons from the 19th and early 20th century. It is beautifully produced and a joy to look at.

Big Neurons

This dude, Greg Dunn, is a neuroscience graduate student who makes beautiful large-scale paintings of neurons in his spare time (grad students have spare time?).  He usues a style that reminds me of traditional Asian painting. The paintings seem to be by commission but he also sells prints. Maybe I'll get some pyramidal cells for my office.

Typewriter

Not sure why I want this. But wouldn't it be fun to have a nice refurbished manual typewriter to mess around with? Every time I write using a different medium I come up with different ideas and perspectives. This would just add to the mix. Plus I think my daughter would also get a kick out of this.

Model Rockets

I'm not sure these are even legal in my state, but I've had this urge to assemble some model rockets and fire them off. We used to do this when I was a kid (we being my cousins and I) and had a lot of fun. I remember spending weeks carefully assembling and decorating them, and then losing half of them, especially when we retrofitted them with a much to0-large fuel cylinders. Somehow they seem to have  lost popularity, or maybe not, I just don't amble upon those circles any more.

Paper Craft

A few years ago I saw these little Japanese kits to make robots out of paper. The kind you cut, build, glue and assemble. They seemed a bit pricy and somehow I didn't get them. But then recently I saw a whole book with a bunch of little monsters you could cut, and assemble, each cooler than the last. I didn't buy it because my kids were screaming about one thing or another, and in the chaos I left the store without buying it.

SpikerBox

OK, so I already have one of these, but it would make a great gift if I didn't. I bought one of these amplifiers that allow you to record neural signals from cockroach legs (and maybe from other critters) for one of my classes, and the activity was a big hit. The maker, Backyard Brains, are always working to improve their boxes and come up with new experiments.

Strumstick

No, it's not what it sounds like. A strumstick is a stringed musical instrument apparently similar to a mountain dulcimer. The frets are set such that it only plays a major scale, and it only has three strings. So if you press any fret on any string, you will always generate a pleasing sound when you strum all three strings, so no matter what you do, it always sounds cool. It looks like it would be a lot of fun to play.

Coffe Crisps

Canadians do a lot of things right. But the best thing they've got going for them are the awesomest candy bar known as a Coffee Crisp. Imagine a Kit Kat on steroids and dunked in a cup of espresso. That's a Coffe Crisp. Light, airy, crunchy and coffee-y chocolate. Everyone I know has a standing order that if they ever go to Canada they must return with Coffee Crisps.

Boomerang

Why the hell not? Wouldn't you like to learn to throw a boomerang? Just make sure its a lefty one.

So there you have it. Now you know what gift to give me... if you ever feel so compelled. What kinds of things do you like?

We spent this Thanksgiving in a quiet northernly locale with a few friends. It was low key and relaxing. Since clear skies were forecast, I thought it would be fun to bring over a small telescope I have and do some stargazing. Full of turkey and other goodies, we headed to a clearing where we could see the night sky. It was dark. It had also snowed the day before and the ice was melting and falling in chunks from the trees that surrounded us, making plopping noises that would occasionally freak us out. The Milky Way snaked its way across the sky  and there was a shitload of stars. Jupiter was high in the sky and was super bright. Using a high-magnification eyepiece we peered at it and you could clearly make out the four Galilean moons – Europa and Io on one side, Ganymede on the other and Callisto dangling right next to the planet. You could also make out the bands on Jupiter's surface. Galileo found these moons in the 1600's and described them in his book Sidereus Nuncius, so it was cool to replicate some 17th century science. We could even make out three of the moons with binoculars.

We then pointed our telescope West, somewhere about half way between Jupiter and the constellation Cassiopeia, above Pegasus, where we found the Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, about 2.5 light-years away, and is roughly of about the same size. Even thought it is bright, I had always had trouble spotting it from urban locations due to light pollution. And every time I'd found it, it looked like an unimpressive smudge. But where we were you could see it with the naked eye and was impressive even with binoculars. On the telescope it was beautiful. I used a 35mm eyepiece to get a wide view and even then it barely fit in the field of view. You could even make out some detail in its structure, which was groovy.

Next up, was the Pleiades. The Pleiades is a star cluster which can be found by tracing a straight line from the direction that Orion's belt points to. The Japanese named this cluster Subaru, thus the logo in Subaru cars. With the naked eye most people can see 5 or 6 stars (I just see a blur) but with a telescope you can resolve hundreds. This was also one of  Galileo's observations. The Pleiades are actually prettiest when seen with binoculars, since you can fit the whole thing into your field of view.

The Pleaides, by Galileo. From Sidereus Nuncius.

By then we were getting cold, so we ran inside for a few sips of bourbon before heading back out. When we returned, Orion was high in the sky, offering a nice view of the Orion nebula. If you look at Orion's belt, there is a smudgy-looking thing right next to it, where his sword or whatever would be. That is the Orion Neubula, which is an area of massive star formation. Again, this object is pretty impressive with binoculars. With the telescope we could sort of see the trapezium, which is a small cluster of stars contained within the nebula.

Finally, we aimed our scope at Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star. It is huge, if centered within the solar system, its size would reach roughly the orbit of Jupiter. To find Betelgeuse, look perpendicular to Orion's belt. On one side you will see a bright blue star named Rigel. On the opposite side is a bright red star. That's Betelgeuse. In the telescope, Betelgeuse stood like a flaming red ruby in the center of a field of stars, staring back at us from 640 light-years away (now I'm getting all Carl Sagan-y), making a nice conclusion to our viewing session.

I first became interested in amateur astronomy during graduate school. During this time there were two very bright comets which showed up in the sky: Hyakutake and the somewhat less impressive Hale-Bopp. A friend recommended using binoculars to see them and I was impressed how much detail you could actually see. Then I was taking a microscopy course, and the professor showed some pictures he took of the comets with a telescope he built himself (a 16-inch reflector, he even ground his own mirror). The pictures were some NASA-quality shit. This totally sold me. So I got a subscription to Sky and Telescope, bought a copy of "Turn Left at Orion" (highly, highly recommended – this is the most useful observing handbook ever) and got myself a $50 pair of binoculars. It is quite impressive what you can spot with binoculars once you know where to look. A cheap pair of binoculars is far superior and has a better field of view than the telescope Galileo used. So you should be able to see Saturn's rings, craters on the moon, Jupiter's moons, etc. with your binoculars. After a couple of years I'd saved up some money and bought a 6-inch reflector and soon after a used small 3-inch refractor (which is much more portable). Since I had kids and started my job my astronomy hobby has gone somewhat by the wayside, but after this weekend I was inspired to pull out the big scope and start observing again. If you want to get hooked to, next time the moon is  at it's half, go outside and look at it with your binoculars. You'll be impressed, trust me.