At work, we were designing some new business cards for me (more on that later!), when I decided that I wanted to put my mobile number on there, but not my actual cell phone number. So I decided that I was going to try and start using a Google Voice local number to forward to my cell, that way I can see which number is being called. Anyway. So the trick now is, what phone number to pick?

I can't just pick a number. It has to have something cool about it.  

The other day at the office, Andy decided he would spam Lisa since she actually signed onto AIM. There was a full minute or maybe more of alternating keys from Andy's desk (the trick is hold Cmd down, and alternate between V and shift). This minute included Lisa's "Are you serious?!" look, also. The menubar and dock icon slowly counted along with all the messages she was getting. 319 was the final count.

This all reminded me of back in the old AIM days, where we actually used AOL Instant Messenger to communicate, and not some multi-protocol application. This kind of behavior would not stand. The application would actually prevent you from sending a lot of messages crazy fast like that. After about 10 or 20 or so of quick consectutive messages, it would give you an alert to wait several seconds.

The other day I was surfing the web, and found a blog post on a handmade subpixel type family. This particular font has a x-height of 3 pixels, which means the letter "x" is 3px tall.

I had heard about subpixels before, but I didn't really know much about them. And subpixels are what make this tiny font actually work. It's how a lowercase "a" can look different than a lowercase "o" in a 3x3 pixel square.

This is the long version about how a subpixel works. But basically (how I understand it), every single pixel (at least on LCDs) is comprised of three subpixels, R G B. By coloring the full pixel with a specific color, it will activate one or two or three of the subpixels, and trick the human eye into only seeing party  of it.

So the first thing I did after I finished my research? I spelled out my name. Without the padding, the image is 58x5 pixels, and 166 bytes. Cool.

I was digging in the wayback machine and was surprised to find various versions of my old website, which managed to survive my adolescence. Sadly, I couldn't find any of my pre-teen sites, but those were more Pokémon fan sites and stuff than a personal website or blog anyway; oh, and they were built in WYSIWYG anyway. (RIP Geocities.)

So I found my favorite design of my old personal site. The one that managed to stay around the longest. It was the first one I had designed myself, and I think I had a hard time letting it go. It was strong and simple; you can already see my minimalistic style. I think I continued to make small tweaks over the times. Maybe I'll revisit it...

I also found my very first stylesheet, that I created when I was 15 (with some help from Dad). Ignore the teenage angst with the declarations for "#kiss".

Lately I have been interested in improving my workflow. I've spent the past month or so trying new ways of doing things in hopes of making my workflow a little better. Not much luck. I can't even find a good blog article for tips.

So I thought I would share my workspace with you.

I use my MacBook as my primary monitor, and a Dell 24" monitor as a second monitor. In addition, I also use three vertical spaces in Leopard's Spaces. Below is the setup that I usually start my day with.

I have my Textmate (code) on full screen in my main monitor, visible in Space 2. On my second monitor, I always have my chat (essential), browser (work and play), and a Finder window. The bottom left corner varies. Sometimes it's Firefox's download manager, a video, terminal, etc; whatever fits. I usually have Terminal open with Visor, for quick (and neat) access with a hotkey. I used to have Firefox take up the full external monitor, but after a while realized I could use the space more efficiently. Everything on the left monitor is set to be visible on all spaces.

I am sitting here working on my site, when I randomly decide to pull up the color information with the web dev toolbar.

How often do you find yourself going to google.com to do a search? Going to amazon.com to look for a product? Some suggest using the little search box in the top right of most browser, but personally that search box annoys me. Why not make use of the URL bar?

One of my favorite features of Firefox has always been the keyword search. This allows you to add a keyword to a certain search and perform search with that keyboard inside of the URL bar. Now, anytime I want to google something, I simply type in "gg whatever" in my URL bar. Say I want to look up a YouTube video, I then type in "yt video".

In early versions, it was complicated, but the newer versions build it right into the bookmarks and contextual menus. I will demonstrate this for a regular Google search, but this will work on most search fields.

Step 1: Add a keyword for this Search. Go to the search engine that you want to add a custom keyword for. Right click on a text input box for a search field. Select "Add a Keyword for this Search."

Twitter is great. We all love twitter. It's simple, and that's what is great about it. It does not have a lot of features, but that is usually fixed by a third party app. There is one major feature, however, that I feel is missing and would have to be implemented by Twitter themselves. Filters.

Currently you have two privacy options, public and locked. If your setting is public, anyone can read your tweets. If it is locked, then that means only the people that follow you can see your tweets. I think that there needs to be more levels that are custom. What if I don't want the people at work to read details about my weekend out, but I still want to tweet to the rest of my friends about stuff? What if I want to complain about my boyfriend to my twitter friends, but I don't want him to see? Or even, I would like to create a Memphis filter, so all of my out of town friends don't have to get spammed with tweets about Memphis; they don't care about where we're meeting for lunch. I would also like to create a "tech filter", so I don't have to bother my non web developer friends about helping me with a CSS bug.

And LiveJournal, one of our very first social networks, has had this feature since its birth.

In your settings, you'd be able to create groups. It'd be very simple, it would show you a list of everyone you are following, and you could pick and choose who goes into your group. Here's a screenshot of how you can currently manage groups from the LiveJournal backend. It's even very primitive as far as look and javascript-y goodness goes.

"What's your login name?"

"Caitlin Woodward."

"One word?"

"WOOD-WARD... oh, yes."

I don't remember where I got this, but I find it in my documents every now and again. It's my favorite Christmas joke:

This is the time of year when we think back to the very first Christmas, when the Three Wise Men; Gaspar, Balthazar and Herb, went to see the baby Jesus and, according to the Book of Matthew, "presented unto Him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh."

These are simple words, but if we analyze them carefully, we discover an important, yet often overlooked, theological fact: There is no mention of wrapping paper.

If there had been wrapping paper, Matthew would have said so:
"And lo, the gifts were inside 600 square cubits of paper. And the paper was festooned with pictures of Frosty the Snowman. And Joseph was going to throweth it away, but Mary saideth unto him, she saideth, 'Holdeth it! That is nice paper! Saveth it for next year!' And Joseph did rolleth his eyeballs. And the baby Jesus was more interested in the paper than the frankincense."

"What's with that clock? 2, 4, 10?"
"Um, those old Dr. Pepper ads? You haven't seen those? My grandparents used to have that clock."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know. It was just some ad campaign they did."
"Oh. I was starting to think, oh, well, I thought it was some math thing to add up to 42. 4*10+2. 42 flavors, right?"
"No, I think it's 32."
"Oh. Well, then. (4+2)/2*10+2."

Upon writing this, I realized that it's actually 23 flavors, not 32. So, 10*2+(4+2)/2. On a side note, my dad always wondered if the number 23 conspiracy theorists drank Dr. Pepper. Also, I looked up what it means, for those who are curious:

They represent the times of day when the human body needs a little “pick-me-up” to avoid an energy slump. It was in the 1920s that Dr. Walter Eddy at Columbia University studied the body’s metabolism. He discovered that a natural drop in energy occurs about 10:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. But he also discovered that if the people in his research study had something to eat or drink at 10, 2 and 4, the energy slump could be avoided.

Some of my life-defining moments:

• Doing pages of math work, praying for no little mistakes, and getting the answer correct!
• Completing math proofs
• Building a full website without crossbrowser testing, and it only having minimal errors in IE
• Receiving hugs from my brothers, my sister, my mom, and my dad
• Making her happy

My Complex Analysis book reads, It is presumed that the reader is familiar with the Cartesian coordinate system.

...why would you be taking Complex Analysis if you weren't?

Following my previous post, Erdös quickly became my favorite mathematician. One, he specialized in graph theory, currently my favorite branch of math. And two, the Erdös number thing was just too cool.

I remember when I was in grade school, my dad's classroom at the school he taught at had a computer lab in it. He named all the computers in there after famous mathematicians. I remember walking around and reading the names, wondering who they were and why there were so famous. I can remember the first three computers in the lab were named Archimedes, Euclid, and Bernoulli, in that order. I remember that he didn't have Einstein. I always wondered why there wasn't an Einstein, since when you are a kid, that's the first person you think of when you think of mathematician. I understand now, though.

When I got my new MacBook a few months ago, I needed a new name for it. I never really had a naming scheme for my tech devices, and I needed one. I always thought my dad's naming scheme was cool, but never really considered it, since I never felt attached to any given mathematician. Until now. So the decision to name my laptop was easy. I named it "Erdös". (Cool. Now any device that directly interacts my computer has an Erdös number 1.)

Last night I decided to install Windows XP on my computer using Boot Camp. I created a partition on my hard drive, and I needed to name it. I have grown weary of using Windoze; it was just kind of getting old. So I did some research to find some mathematicians that Erdös published with. In no time, I found out about this theorem named the Erdös-Ko-Rado Theorem. It's a hypergraph theorem that Erdös co-published with two mathematicians named Ko and Rado. Perfect. I named my Windows partition "Ko". Then I renamed my iPhone to "Rado". Awesome.

A couple years ago, I learned about this thing called the Mathematics Genealogy Project. It's a math family tree based on mathematicians who have earned their PhD. A mathematician's parent is their PhD advisor. It's very neat how few links it takes to link one of your own math professors to famous mathematicians. Only four links up, one of my professors is linked to Neumann and Klein. Anyone heard of the klein bottles? Following Klein up, you have Lipschitz. And then Martin Ohm, the little brother of Georg Ohm, of which Ohm's Law is named after. Another fun thing to do is see how close of cousins two randomly picked math professors are. Another math professor of mine is five links away from Klein, also. They are math fifth cousins.

On a similar note, there was this mathematican named Paul Erdös. He was one of those who didn't really live anywhere, but traveled around everywhere. He stayed at fellow mathematicians' houses for months at a time. During his stays, he would work on a math problem with that friend until they solved it. He would publish a paper on that particular problem with his friend, and then move on to the next friend. As a result, he published a ton of papers, around 1,500 with over 500 colloborators. This thing emerged in the math world known as the Erdös number. If you published a paper with Erdös himself, then you had an Erdös number 1. If you published a paper with someone who published a paper with Erdös, then you had a number 2. And so on. This idea was so cool to me. My undergraduate advisor is an Erdös number 2. If only I could publish a paper with him, I would have an Erdös number 3. And that would just be the coolest thing ever.

One time in a class, one of my professors was talking about this, the math genealogy tree and Erdös numbers. He asked us why we thought that mathematicians did these things. This sort of ranking in the math world. I answered because mathematicians are a little egotistical. I picked the wrong word, because the class ooh-ed, and that's not what I intended. I mean, I'm the same way. A friend of mine saved me with the word narcissistic. Mathematicians are extremely proud of their accomplishments. Narcissistic, even.

"Wanna try to partition your hard drive again?"
"Nah, we can do it in Seattle."
"Your backup is here, though. If it messes up, you will have to wait to get your files back."
"I know. Yeah... I might need some of them."
"Like what?"
"Some of my research documents, and..."
"Well my dad can just email them to you."
"Yeah, you're right."
"I like how we totally just switched sides of this discussion."

I have developed a recent obsession with analog clocks. Not just any analog clock, but one with roman numeral numbers.

Take a look at these two clocks. Notice anything unusual?

Today at work, Andy was complaining about the company business card (that was actually designed by guys who work here) and how it was hard to read the numbers. I told him that he is supposed to feel the numbers. He laughed.

That made me wonder if they made credit cards in braille. Turns out some credit card companies actually make them in large print and braille.

Then I thought it would be funny if I could get my credit card in binary, or hex.

Decimal:
5412-3456-7890-1234

Full binary:
10011001110100111111111101101100101111010111111110010

Binary broken up into four sets of 4 decimal:
1010100100100-110110000000-1111011010010-10011010010

Full hex:
133a7fed97aff2

Hex broken up into four sets of 4 decimals:
1524-0d80-1ed2-04d2

The other day, I was headed to work, riding up the elevator in my office building. A white-haired business man got in the elevator with me. You could tell he was high in ranks by the quality of his suit, but he also a natural smile about him, no doubt had a couple of grandchildren.

I pushed the "6" button, and he didn't push anything. Apparently he was going there too. It was silent for the first three floors. Then he said, "Who you going to see?" Already I was thrown off by the phrasing. After an unnecessary pause of confusion, since it made me look like I had to think (this is the same pause when someone asks me how old I am), I replied, "RocketFuel."

He looked at me. "Does your daddy work there?"

Oh. Right. This hadn't happened in a long time. "No."

"Your mommy?"

"Um. No."

He looked at me.

"I work there."

Then he did this weird jump backwards, like he had been startled. "How old are you?!"

Turns out he works at what my office calls the "Last Name Company." It's actually a company name compromising of five last names.

Mom: Go get Caitlin's approval.

Conlan, walking over: Where's your approval?

A bird almost flew into the side of my face today. I was walking out of an open doorway on the school campus, and this huge black bird swiped down and inches in front of me. Had I been a few seconds faster or it had been a few seconds slower, it would have flown directly into the side of my face. Now, don't get me wrong, I am very glad it didn't hit me. But looking at it from the other perspective, it wouldn't have been too bad if it did. It would be interesting, and funny (definitely more retrospectively, but I imagine there would be plenty of humor at the time). Immediately I envisioned just this huge hole shaped gash on my forehead or on my cheek. People would ask what happened, and I would reply nonchalantly that a bird flew into me. I mean, how often does that happen?

Or, I could see myself in the emergency room. Somehow the bird managed to lodge its beak into the side of my face, and it was too deep that I thought I shouldn't take it out myself.  So I would be sitting there in the waiting room, you know for three hours of course. People would be coming in with gun wounds and missing limbs, and I would be sitting there with a bird sticking out of side of my head. It would be kind of funny.

Oh, wow. I just realized that the bird would probably be still alive for all of this. Provided that it didn't pass out from shock or anything, the new image would be of me, sitting in the waiting room, with a bird stuck into the side of my head and flapping around like mad. Would it stop trying to flap after a couple hours? What would happen if it dislodged itself in the waiting room? I could picture that too. Two hours have already passed. I'm lying down in the waiting room chairs because I have a headache now since the bird has been flapping, well, because there is a beak lodged into the side of my head. So I'm lying there. The bird is lying on the side of my face. The bird is tired because it's been flapping for hours. Every ten minutes or so the bird flaps around sort of lazily, but to no avail. But finally, the bird manages to get free, and starts to fly away. I shoot up in immense pain because the bird just dislodged itself and now there is blood spurting out of my head Kill- Bill-style. Meanwhile, the bird used up all its energy flapping, so it can't really fly. It falls to the ground and just kind of flaps around the ground like a fish. So. That might not be as funny.

Perhaps, after all, I am thankful for those two seconds that didn't bring us together.

My algorithms professor writes the lowercase letter "l" with loops. Because of this, whenever he writes the word loop, it actually looks like "Poop". See picture (I apologize for my paint-like version; it wasn't worth the trouble of writing and scanning).

Now, I don't know why I hadn't noticed this before. I've had him for another programming class before, where we have talked extensively about loops.

So in class on Friday, he was talking about loop invariants. And, on the board, he wrote the words "loop invariant", with a rather large loop on the l, and it stood out bright, "poop invariant" was written on the board. I was immediately amused, but shortly forgot about it. About twenty minutes later, Teddy, sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered, "That looks like poop invariant." I replied with a bit of excitement, at the fact that someone else noticed, "I know!" And then for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about it. My professor, in the middle of lecturing, turned around and looked at me, noticing that I had a grin on my face - which only made me grin more. I saw him pause his words slightly, with a hint of a smile reflecting my grin, and almost stopping to question, but he continued on with his lecture.

If he had asked, I would have told him without hesitation about what I found so funny. Which I think would have made the situation even more funnier: the only girl, in a class of college boys, pointing out such testosteronic humor.