WHAT?!?! NO WAY!!!

So..guess what? Remember that story I started back in 08 about Scott and his creepy dreams? Yea. Well..I got kinda bored tonight (well, this morning...its 2:40 am..) and wrote one and a half more chapters. Yep. So start at chapter 4 (Though you will pro want to restart from the beginning!) and HOPEFULLY this time I can keep it going for a while longer! I have changed a few tiny things, and the overall direction of the story has changed in my mind, but I believe its for the better! (much, MUCH better lol..I'm trying to remember what exactly I was thinking when I started this >.>) Anyway, go read it and tell me what you think! Oh, and yes, I still have that movie review on the way. I have just been suuuper busy the last few days and I wanna make sure I do it right! Ok, well I think its time for bed after a good hour and a half of blogging! Night everyone!

Andrew

Quick Question

Hey just to get a feel for where people are at..how many would be interested to hear my thoughts on a movie I recently watched? I already have the post half written (lol) but its gonna be reeaaally long so if your interested let me know! Otherwise I'll just stick to the normal stuff. Later!

Andrew

A New Beginning

So after over a year of neglecting this blog, I have decided its time to re-start it! I really miss hearing from all of you on a regular basis! I'm not quite sure how to approach it though. I'm stuck between writing about scientific topics and just every day life. I suppose I could just do a combination of both eh? Maybe thats what I'll do with this post!





First off, a science tidbit. Did you know that a 9v battery has more than enough power to stop your heart?! I certainly didn't until the other day in physics! So the story behind this is that this super tough ex-marine decided he wanted to test the internal resistance of his body using an ohmmeter, which is a device used to measure resistance in a circuit by running 9v through the circuit using two pointed metal probes. Well this guy, being tough, decided to jam the probes INTO his thumbs, creating a current across his heart large enough to kill him!!


So, how does this happen?? First off its important to note that its CURRENT that kills, not VOLTAGE. Given a circuit with low enough resistance, a 9v battery can generate a massive current. Current is calculated using the Equation V = IR, which is Ohm's law. So say you have a 9v battery and a 1 Ohm resistor, V/R = I = 9/1 = 9 Amperes of current! Thats more than your alarm clock draws from the wall by at least a factor of 9. Anyway back to the stry. So some important numbers are: External resistance of the body ~1,000,000 ohms, Internal resistance of the Body ~200ohms, Current Threshold of feeling for the human Body .001 Amperes, Threshold of heart failure .05 Amperes. So! Using those numbers you can calculate the current across the guy"s heart for both external and internal resistance. for external we have 9/1,000,000 =0.000009 amps. Thats pretty low. In fact so low you cant even feel it! However, once you penetrate the skin you have electrolyte enriched blood, which conducts electricity waaay better than skin! So using the same equation, 9/200 = .045 amps! This is extremely close to our Threshold of heart failure! In fact, close enough that since the threshold of every body varies, as does internal resistance, that this is definitly enough to kill. Scary huh?! So think about that next time you stick a battery to your tongue! No just for fun lets say your stranded out in a rain storm underneath a transmission line (xD) and the line breaks and lands on you. Transmission lines run 240,000v, and the resistance of a wet body is about 1,000 ohms. So 240,000/1000 = 1000 Amps! Wow!! Can you say "Fried" ?? lol

So to change the subject completely, life has been very interesting on my end lately. I just recently switched majors from computer engineering to dual degree Phyiscs/Electrical Engineering. I decided after the last two semesters that programming just isn't what I want to do for the rest of my life, so I decided to go with my original calling; Physics! I love everything about physics, and this semester's class has reinforced that in me. The bummer about that is that the dual degree takes 5 years, and since last year I was only taking CS classes, none of that counted towards my new degree. Sooo I have 4 years left after this one. *SIGH* Oh well, ya do what you have to i guess!

Soo on an entirely unrelated (or maybe not so unrelated? You decide i guess..) note, lately I have been completely OBSESSED with Evanescence!! It seems like no matter how many times I listen to their songs, I never get tired of them! At this very moment I'm listening Hello from the album Fallen. Great song! Since yesterday afternoon I have listened to thier album The Open Door twice and am over halfway through Fallen right now. At the end of this week I'll give you a tally of how many times I listened to each of their albums! :D Evanescence forever!! hahaha

Finally, At the end of every post from now on I want to ask a comment question pertaining to the post! It may be funny or thought provoking, but either way I'll try to make it something interesting to answer! So today's question is:

What was the biggest electric shock you have ever gotten, and how did it happen?

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any questions/comments/suggestions just hit me up in the comment section!

~Andrew

Wow....

People..I must say I am sorry for neglecting this blog for so long! I guess I just get so crazy that Iforget this even exists. But anyway I figured I would make an update now that my second semester at UWEC is in full swing, and my first order of buisness is to say that the previous post is now obsolete. I actually had to stay up all night last week thursday in order to finish my homework!! I wasn't even procrastinating! But i suppose thats what I get for taking 17 credits this semester. :P 

Other then that, my life has been generally uneventful. I basically spend most of my waking time doing homework and eating, which as you can probably imagine gets very boring. I'm sure you all know about my broken elbow, but I guess its worth mentioning since it happened between now and my last post! Its finally starting to get back to normal, since it only hurts now when I completely extend and stretch it! yay! 

So at this very moment I am trying to decide how to make this post more interesting....maybe ill post a picture of me taken on friday...for no particular reason other then to brighten up the post! 

So how is that for interesting? Or maybe random? I dont know, but at least it made the post more interesting I hope!  Oh and it made me think of another thing to write about too! The other day I managed to fry the power supply to my $200 guitar pedal...aaand its not a replaceable part! sooo im trying a hotwiring trick hoping i can resurect it from its current state of "Glorified paperweight."

While on the subject of music, I must endorse a new band I have found. Well, actually I have known about it looong before now but ill pretend they are new to me because they are new to everyone else! So without further ado, i present Bell n' Bailey - When I'm Alone!

They also have two other covers under their youtube channel -- check them out!! They post a new song every two weeks, so stay tuned! 

I guess that about wraps up everything I have to say right now...hopefully I will decide to update again sooner then later! haha peace out all!

More Posting on College Life...

People, I hve officially trumped my previous unintentional short-sleep record! As of two nights ago, I had only 1.5 hours of sleep. Yes, thats right, 1.5 hours. Hint of the day: "Dont put off a 7 hour long binary math assignment til the night before its due." lol

Anyway....haha so lets see....oh!! last weekend was basically like the best weekend EVER!! So im sitting in my room friday afternoon and Brandon (one of my friends) walks up and asks me if i want to go to a Milwaukee Bucks game that night! So of course i said yes and left in a half an hour for lacrosse. I love no-plan trips lol anyway, the game was awesome, cept the Bucks lost :( but whatever. Then we basically spent the rest of the night driving around this town called greenwood which is about 2 hours from lacrosse, doing crazy stuff like climbing a pavillion and starting a bonfire on brandon's driveway! :D Yea if u want to see pics u should be able to see them under pictures of my from others on facebook....let me know if u dont see any pictures of a playground! lol So yea i got back that day at 5am and slept about three hours before mom came and picked me up to go fishing with grandpa. I only caught one little 4in crappie, but it was still fun! then...well lets see...the packers won, the dodgers won, and the rays won!!!  all in all it was a good weekend lol. Then the week hit. :O Monday was ok...but monday night 2 other guys and i starte that binary math assignment at 9pm. We got done at 4:15AM! And of course in order to stay up that late we all had tons of caffiene. I dont know about the other guys, but i know i didnt fal asleep til about 5-530ish, and of course had to be up by 630. That sucked. THEN! i went to chemistry, and realized that in all of the hype about the binary math assignment, i had forgotton to study for a quiz in chem. Then OF COURSE he had to pick THAT quiz to be the hardest quiz iv ever seen. sooo that didnt help my chemistry grade at all. Well, that brings us up to today, and so far nothing has happened today, so lets hope it stays that way!!! Soo...i think that about does it for current events here, so ill talk to u all later!!!

Hang loose!!!

*Sigh* Sooo neglectful

Hello again everyone!! I apologize for being so neglectful of this whole blogging thing...in case you couldnbt guess, my life has become incredibly crazy in the last month. I mean INCREDIBLY crazy! Like, this week was homecoming, so all day every day there is stuff going on besides classes, so it gets pretty intense sometimes lol. But yea, we won the homecoming game today against oshkosh! WOOO!!!! 34-0! And it was really funny cuz after the game 6 of us went to Old Country Buffet for supper, and ran into the Oshkosh team....awkward!!! I have to say it was the most depressed looking group of guys i have ever seen lol cuz we OWNED them!! hahaha. anyway...OH!!! i forgot the Brewers game is on!!! *gets up and turns on the tv...literally :P*-----*returns 6 hours later after the brewers/phillies and Cubs/Dodgers games * YES!!!!! GO BREWERS!!!!! wooo!! lol sorry i have all of the sudden gotten very much into baseball. Sorry Raihala's, im not a twins fan. :P ANYWAY where the heck was i?? Well....i guess ill talk about classes. I seriously miss classical education. i mean SERIOUSLY. these classes seem so...cheap? i mean, im learning, but not NEARLY to the depth that i did at dokime or home. I really miss all of you a lot. :( Its hard having friends that run on a fraction of the thought depth that you do, if you know what i mean. :p So yea, we need to have a dokime reunion ok??? Oh and i discovered another truth. Your teacher can have a HUGE impact on how much you like a class AND how well you do in it :P. Yea, so sophmore year, i had chemistry and LOVED it! Like, it was my favorite subject in all of hs. NOW i havee almost the exact same class here, buuuuut...wow. I absolutly HATE it. It is the worst class i have. It doesnt matter how hard or how long i study, I just cant figure out my prof's quizzes. Hes a great guy, but he doesnt know how to teach. savvy? So even thought i understand everyhitng he is talking about, somehting is OBVIOUSLY not clicking when u look at my grades in his class. Yea, it sucks....but thankfully its the only one im having trouble with. everyhitng else is going great class wise. Wow...i just read over everyhting i have written so far, and i have used a LOT of all capital words!! ummm......i just did it again. im so dumb. maybe its cuz im really tired?? i stayed up till 330 last night and right now its 11:30 pm...so im kinda tired right now. What the heck kinda blog post is this anyway??? im basically writing what im thinking as i think it, which is really weird for me cuz i alwas think everyhting out b4 i say it. So yea..idk if i have anyhting else to say tonight so i hope u all are having a great time at school (as if :P) and i hope i can talk to u all soon!!! 

hang loose!!!

Andrew

Back to Science: The Dynamically Reassignable Instruction Execution Register (DRIER)

Ok, well i have strayed from scientific posts for quite a while now, so i decided to start back up with this!! Now the subject matter of this post may go waaaay over your heads, but i will try to make it understandable. Also understand that im beginning writing this at 1:10AM so...bear with me lol.

Ok, so a while back i had this idea about computer processor architecture. See, the way they are currently built, The internal execution registers are set at a fixed size...say 32 or 64 bit, meaning that they are designed to execue eiher 32 or 64 bit instructions.
Now the problem comes in the fact that as far as i understand, when you have a 64 bit instruction register, if you have a 32 bit instruction going into that 64 bit register, the register must wait for a second 32 bit instruction to come along and fill that register the rest of the way up. This can be thought of like a 16 oz cup. if you try to fill that cup using an 8oz measuring cup, it will take twice as long to fill up. This delay in filling the register causes it to be virtually usless for several clock cycles. (a clock cycle is the time measurement in a computer processor. a 3ghz processor runs at 3 billion cycles per second.) While this may not seem like a long time to us as humans..think of it in the long term. If that 64 bit register had to be filled with two 32 bit instructions, it would take a minimum of four clock cycles to execute. This is because it would require two to fill the register, and then two to execute both instructions. Now compare this to one 64 bit instruction, which only takes a minimum of two clock cycles; one for loading, and one for execution. Thus, using purely 64 bit instructions THEORETICALLY would result in %100 more yeild, meaning, say, that you could encode an mp3 in half the time using purley 64 bit instructions. Now i say theoretically, because this is a HIGHLT idealized situation used to illustrate my point. But i think you get what i am saying. Having a fixed register size causes problems in the fact that it wastes perfectly good clock cycles if (and when) your instruction set size is mixed. Now comes my idea. DRIER. WHAT if one could make a processor in which there were multiple paralell execution registers that were all linked together? Meaning that you could have 16 32 bit registers, arrayed in a way so that they formed two lines each 256 bits long. This would allow for multiple possibilities. a) each register could execute a single 256 bit instruction, b) each could execute 8 32 bit instructions simultaniously, or c) each could execute a mixed combonation of differant instruction lengths. The differance between DRIER and standard execution is the way the register is loaded. In a standard system, the execution register is loaded from the "bottom up" meaning that you have to take two clock cycles to fill a 64 bit register with 32 bit instructions. With DRIER, the pipelines are composed not of one massive 256 bit pipeline, but of 8 32 bit pipelines, each able to load itself in one clock cycle. These regieters can also stach though, meaning that two 32 bit registers can merge to execute one 64 bit instruction. Make sense? i know this is getting VERY technical, but im almost done...and if you have any questions, please ask in the comments!! Anyway, this would allow for massive increases in productivity if such a processing architecture was adopted, because there would be very little waste in processing time. All right, well its now 1:30 and i have successfully exhausted myself...so i hope you at least somewhat enjoyed this..and please ask questions if you understood enough to ask!! lol

DrEw