Song of the day: "It's De-lovely" by Cole Porter

I always feel like belting out this song in a hallway.

I feel the sudden urge to sing
The kind of ditty that invokes the spring
So, control your desire to curse
While I crucify the verse
This verse you've started seems to me
The "Tin Pan-tithesis" of melody
So to spare you all the pain
I'll skip the darn thing and sing the refrain

Mi-mi-mi-mi, re-re-re-re, do-so-mi-do-la-si

The night is young, the skies are clear
So if you wanna go walkin', dear
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely

I understand the reason why
You're sentimental, 'cause so am I
It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely

You can tell at a glance what a swell night this is for romance
You can hear, dear Mother Nature murmuring low, "Let yourself go"

So please be sweet, my chickadee
And when I kiss ya, just say to me
"It's delightful, it's delicious, it's delectable, it's delirious,
It's dilemma, it's de-limit, it's deluxe, it's de-lovely"

Time marches on and soon it´s plain
You´ve won my heart and I lost my brain
It´s delightful, it´s delicious, it´s de-lovely

Life seems so sweet that we decide
It´s in the bag to get unified
It´s delightful, it´s delicious, it´s de-lovely

See the crowd in that church
See the proud parson plopped on his perch
Get the sweet beat of that organ sealing our doom
Here goes the groom – boom!

How they cheer and how they smile
As we go galloping down the aisle
It´s divine, dear, it´s de-vene, dear, it´s de-wunderbar, it´s de-victory
It´s de-velop, it´s de-vinner, it´s de-voix, it´s de-lovely

The night is tired and so we take
The few hours off to eat wedding cake
It´s delightful, it´s delicious, it´s de-lovely

It feels so fine to be a bride
And how´s the groom while he´s slightly fried
It´s divineful, it´s delicious, it´s de-lovely

To the pop of champagne, off we hop in our plush little plane
´Til a bright light through the darkness cosily calls, "Niagara Falls"

Well, my love, our day´s complete
What a beautiful bridal suite
It´s de-reamy, it´s de-rousy, it´s de-reverie, it´s de-rhapsodie
It´s de-regal, it´s de-royal, it´s de-ritz, it´s de-lovely

We settle down as man and wife
To solve the riddle called married life
It´s delightful, it´s delicious, it´s de-lovely

Song of the day: "Experiment" by Cole Porter

Finally, a song loosely about science written by a real songwriter, and not just any songwriter... one of the greatest American songwriters in history, Cole Porter! (If you watch the movie "It's Delovely," you might guess what the characters think the song is about.) My PhD advisor really likes this song.

Before you leave these portals,
to meet less fortunate mortals,
there's just one final message I would give to you.

You all have learned reliance,
on the sacred teachings of science.
So I hope through life you never will decline,
in spite of Philistine defiance.
Do what all good scientists do.

Experiment.
Make it your motto day and night.

Experiment.
And it will lead you to the light.

The apple on the top of the tree
is never too high to achieve.
So take an example from Eve,
experiment.

Be curious,
though interfering friends may frown.

Get furious,
at each attempt to hold you down.

If this advice you always employ,
the future can offer you infinite joy
and merriment.

Experiment,
and you'll see.

How to do theoretical physics

I talked to a few of my colleagues about what to do when you are stuck. Here is a compilation of their suggestions.

Every theoretical physics PhD student reaches a point where mindless cranking and/or doing what their advisor tells them to do doesn't work anymore. This is a hump that the student must learn to get over. Typically the advisor doesn't know how to solve the problem either. If the advisor sat down for a week and thought about it, he/she could probably solve it, but of course, that's not what happens. Either the student solves it or the project is abandoned. Smetimes the student shows the advisor why the project is too hard.

If you are stuck:

• Read the literature. Work out all the equations in the papers, and keep your work in a notebook.
  
• Talk to lots of people. Be aggressive. It is especially helpful to talk to other students because they are at your level.
  
• Figure out why you are stuck. If you quit the project, as least you know why. Sometimes you go around in circles because you don't even know why you are stuck.

Sometimes, there's no problem to solve, because it's been solved already and only a very serious publication search recovers it. Sometimes, it's very hard to find the paper where your problem was solved because many years ago, people used different language. One way to avoid this is to find some people who are experts on the type of problem you're working on, and ask them. This could be tricky, because you don't want them to steal it from you, but if you do it in an advanced stage it would probably won't happen.

A good theoretical physics PhD advisor sees his/her students multiple times during the week. Some advisors likes to pop into their student/postdoc's office and provide "moral support". If your advisor doesn't have time, it's a good idea to email him/her to talk about the project between meetings.

You shouldn't be spending all your time hammering away at one problem. Classes are over, so you should spend time talking to other people and learning about other things. There is nothing to feel guilty about. This is why you are in academia!

For the PhD student, there should be a balance of what they are good at and not good at. If a student is naturally good at numerics, he/she should do some analytical work and vice versa if the student is good at analytical work.

Remember: theoretical physics is hard!! The purpose of theoretical physics PhD is to prove that you can do theory research. Unfortunately, not everyone can pass this "test."

Essential skills for a scientist

I was having a conversation with someone who wasn't sure what he wanted to study in physics graduate school. He was worried that if he chose one field, it would be very hard to make progress, but it would be important work, whereas if he chose another field, it would be easier to make fast progress, but the work might not be so fundamental.

I wasn't sure what to say, so I advised him to take a different perspective:

"Another way you could make a choice is to think about what skills you want to acquire. You want to have the skills you need when the exciting development comes along, so that you can jump into it right away."

Wolfgang Ketterle, an atomic physicist and 2001 Nobel laureate, himself said that skills are important.

Changing fields was a crucial experience for me. Amazed to see how much of what I had learnt before could be applied within the new field, I realized that general skills are much more important than specific knowledge. I thought it would take a long time before I became productive in my new environment, but within months, graduate students who had been working in this area for much longer came and sought my advice and leadership. This experience gave me the self-confidence to venture into new areas, and provided the impetus for my later decision to come to the United States and start once again in a new field.

(Quoted from the Nobel Prize website autobiography)

The question is, what are the important skills for a scientist to learn? I can think of a few:

• Asking important questions and picking good research problems, i.e. ones that are solvable and interesting.
  
• Understanding the big picture and being able to pick out what is essential and interesting from a mess of details.
  
• Turning a relatively vague and abstract research question into a concrete calculation or an observable quantity that can be measured in an experiment.
  
• Writing (papers and grants)
  
• Speaking
  
• Managing and training (teaching) students
  
• Collaboration skills
  
• Life balance and project management
  
• Programming skills
  
• Math skills

In addition, for an experimentalist in physical science, it is also important to know some signal processing. (My sister contributed a few items on the list.)

Arcade gaming at home

I was playing Metal Slug on my Nintendo DS Lite the other day and my hands were dying from so much button pressing. I realized that what I really need is an arcade style joystick. Arcade style games aren't really made anymore, so I could install MAME emulation software on my PC to play retro games like 1942, Gauntlet, Street Fighter II, and Samurai Showdown. A good resource for anything related to building your own MAME arcade box is MAMEWorld. I found some cool stuff like playing Mahjong in MAME and even light guns for your Time Crisis fix!

I had no idea there are so much information about different types of joysticks and buttons. slagcoin has an extensive guide here. Apparently, there are three major joystick types: Happ (US), Sanwa (Japan), and Seimitsu (Japan). It's much easier to get high quality arcade parts from Japan because the arcade games are still popular there. Americans don't really play arcade games anymore. Many people buy parts and mod their own custom joysticks. That sounds like fun, but I'd like to play with some of the off-the-shelf stuff first so I can get a feel for what I like. Eventually, I'd like to do a complete arcade box build project as described in MaximumPC's article "How to Build a Kick-Ass MAME Arcade Cabinet from an Old PC."

There are few recommended off-the-shelf manufacturers.

• Hori is the biggest game controller manufacturer and has a high quality Real Arcade Pro line.
  
• MadCatz makes a Street Fighter IV FightStick Tournament Edition for PS3 and XBox 360.
  
• X-Arcade makes US style arcade joysticks. They are lower quality than Hori or MadCatz but they are easy to mod and the PC board is supposedly 100% compatible with MAME.
  

After some cursory research, these joysticks seem good for a MAME setup:

• Hori Real Arcade Pro VX-SA for Xbox 360. A top-of-the-line model which uses all real arcade parts and layout.
  
• Hori Real Arcade Pro EX-SE for XBox 360. Another top-of-the-line model which uses all real arcade parts. It's unusual in that it uses Seimitsu parts, rather than Sanwa parts. All the other Hori and MadCatz joysticks are Sanwa.
  
• X-Arcade Solo Joystick. A decent joystick but kind of pricey for the parts. I would get this one for doing some modding.

There are Hori sticks that are 1/3 cheaper, but they don't use authentic arcade buttons and the whole point was not to do any modding. I looked into MadCatz joysticks, but there wasn't much feedback on using them successfully for MAME emulation.

Quote of the day: Getting back to who you were

In the episode "False Labor" from the TV series Caprica, Daniel Graystone has a conversation with Joseph Adama.

Daniel: It's like every decision I've made since the bombing has been a wrong turn. By now I've made so many of them I'm not sure I even know how to get back.

Joseph: Get back to where?

Daniel: To who I was, or who I thought I was.

Joseph: You can't do that alone. You need somebody. You need someone who can see the man you were inside the man you've become and forgive you.

What I've learned

1. Physics should be fun, like a video game. When I started doing physics, I thought it was a religious calling and that physics was all about doing important things. Looking back, I realize that I invented the idea of a religious calling because I was afraid of my parents disapproving of me doing physics. I went to an elite college where the professors were all super-competitive and serious about science. My motivation for doing physics was horribly warped. A friend of mine told me that when she was excited about research, she would work enthusiastically all night. She said, "It's like playing a video game."
   
2. Collaborate with a good friend. Science is so much more fun if you can hang out with your friends and do research at the same time! By friend, I mean someone of your level, not your advisor. When I came to grad school, I wasn't used to working with people my age. I had only worked with professors and senior postdocs. Relationships with senior people tend to be very formal. If you want to grow as a scientist, you need to have some freewheeling discussions where anything goes and no one feels embarrassed about anything.
   
3. If you can, find a friend of similar cultural background and gender. This is extremely important if you are a minority. Your cultural majority friends may be the most well-meaning people in the world, but they can't see your whole perspective, only a part of it. It took me a long time to learn this, because I had a very strong ideal that everyone should be culturally neutral, gender neutral, and age neutral. I used to look down on the "women in science" meetings because I thought "these women are bunch of wimps, can't they toughen up?" (The other reason I disliked "women in science" meetings was because the majority of the women were of a different culture from me. So I was a minority within a minority.) The unfortunate reality of the world is that it is much easier for women to be close friends with other women. Similarly, it is much easier for people of the same cultural background to be friends. I was on a hockey team where no matter how much I tried, I never belonged. My teammates were women, but we didn't have anything else in common: different age, different education, different cultural background. Sometimes, a good commonality to bond over is simply sharing the experience of being a minority.
   
4. Don't work through deep depression. It's true that when something bad happens, you should keep going to work and keeping up the routine. But don't do this for deep depression. It's the equivalent of trying to run a 10K race on a broken leg. You only make things worse. Not only do you fail to accomplish anything, you will end up destroying your confidence.
   
5. When you are in trouble, make sure you talk to people who can *actually* help you. These seems kind of obvious, but when you are in a panic, you usually go to whoever you feel most comfortable with. That person may not be someone who can actually help you. If you are having problems in the workplace, you need to talk to people at your current workplace, not your old workplace. If you are having problems with family, you need to talk to people who know your family well or have the same cultural background as your family.
   
6. If you are have a multi-cultural heritage and/or unconventional upbringing, life is even more confusing. My nationality and ethnic background are very different. This is a classic American problem. In addition, I have a gender related problem (hard to explain). My mom was not a good role model for me, so I adopted my dad as a role model and tried to imitate him. I feel uncomfortable around conventional women, but I don't quite fit in with the boys either.
   
7. Lay down your burdens. Bad things happen to everyone, but we have to let go of the past and forgive people. I think I always knew this lesson pretty well, but I mention it for completeness.
   

[Additional note: One of my friends said my post made me sound biased towards certain types of people. I don't want to make it sound like I can only be friends with women or Asians. If I see a Hispanic male walking down the street, I don't think to myself, "Well! There is no way I can be friends with that guy." I strive to be gender-blind, race-blind, orientation-blind, age-neutral, etc. I simply notice that in hindsight, among the friends I gravitate towards most, we seem to have some strong common connection. It's almost possible that I went through a phase where I found it hard to fit in and decided out of bitterness to construct a theory to explain my troubles.]

Flesh may freeze and stick to cold surfaces

This is a real figure in the Oxford dilution refrigerator manual.  Similarly, don't stick your tongue on cold surfaces.

The zero Gmail inbox for minimizing distractions

In a somewhat old (but still good!) post, Cal Newport explains how to mark all your incoming messages to Gmail as "read."  I also take the additional step of moving the messages to another label called "process." 

So now I never see anything in my Gmail inbox, which is great for minimizing distractions.  I can still go into Gmail and write messages, but without getting sidetracked by new messages in my inbox.  Having a "zero" inbox means that I'm not tempted to check new messages.  Now I can really stick to only checking my personal email once a day.  I wait until the end of the day to look at my "process" label and respond to the messages then.

I restrict my Gmail account to personal mail, but I think this method might also be helpful to people who receive work mail.

Here's how to set up the filter.

1. Go to the upper righthand corner of your Gmail screen and click on "Settings".
   
2. Click on the tab "Filters".
   
3. Towards the bottom of the screen, click on "Create new filter".
   
4. In the "From:" field, type hyphen followed by your Gmail address, for example, "-me@gmail.com". This will prevent Gmail from marking your sent emails with the new label we are about to create. So any mail sent to me@gmail.com will not be affected and go to your Inbox normally. You can include several emails, for example, in the "From:" field, type "-me@gmail.com -mom@gmail.com -dad@gmail.com".
   
5. Leave all the other fields blank and click on "Next Step".
   
6. Gmail asks you to choose some actions. Select the following: "Skip the Inbox (Archive It)", "Mark as read", and "Apply the label:". For the "Apply the label" box, click on the drop-down box and select "New label". Enter a new label and click "OK". I called mine "process".
   
7. Click "Update Filter" and you are done.

Instead of going to your inbox, now you go to the "process" (or whatever you called it) label to see your new mail. You can assign labels or delete messages as you normally due. When you are done processing a message, simply remove the "process" label. You can use the shortcut "Y" or click on 'Remove label "process".'

The excluded email addresses ("me@gmail.com" in this example) will not be affected and mail from this addresses are delivered to your Inbox. So you can include important addresses in the excluded list, for instance: "mom@gmail.com". I know, for sure, that a list of hyphened addresses works, e.g. "-me@gmail.com -mom@gmail.com -dad@gmail.com". I have heard reports that using something fancier like wildcards and Boolean operators has problems.

Some interesting ideas summarized as quotes

“People always ask, ‘What is your greatest failure?’ I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!” - Jim Coudal

"The key to success is to be cheerful in the face of constant failure."  - my take on failure

"Hara Hachi Bu.  (腹八分)" - a Okinwana saying which means you should eat until you are 80% full (not sure if my translation into Japanese is correct)

There is also some kind of Japanese saying that goes "made stupid by peace."  I'm not sure if this is really a Japanese saying, so correct me if I'm wrong.  The idea is that the peace and comfort we experience in first world countries makes us lazy and complacent.