To be fair, I don't want to be right. The more quality choices (and fewer console exclusives) people have, the better. I just can't see a good way to put more powerful hardware inside something that looks like a freaking router (picked one of the first ones I saw with a vaguely similar chassis and dimensions).

EDIT: Also, do note that even this router has visible intake/outtake for heat exchange, as opposed to the new Atari thing.

Received. Challenge accepted! ;)

Those times aren't from anything official. At least I think. The last tournament I played was using 1h/player and it's pretty much what I find as my minimum. Dunno if I'm that slow or just like to think about stuff.

Are you ever on lichess? I'd love to play a correspondence game.

I just made an account. Unimaginitive 'devac'. I have to say that I'm surprised that lichess offers 'correspondence' style of game. Most (if not all) of the services I know consider 15m/p as slow and ponderous. :P

Thanks. I'll try to keep that in mind. Should stuff like that be in 'hobby' section of the CV? It's already quite extensive. I don't know if it would work with getting a job as a programmer, though.

Also, just to let you know: you just avoided a really angry rant about how my recent job searching went. I wrote it, deleted it, drank some coffee and wrote this instead.

Small in size, form-factor that doesn't indicate efficient cooling and it's a press release about new hardware that's deliberately vague about specs. Inside there's going to be an overpriced Raspberry/Banana Pi, at best.

EDIT: You might not agree, but I'm saving this post for later use.

I reduced it with charcoal (or purified carbon powder, I can't recall). Also, my Father gave me a tip to put some fine sand inside with all the other things. It took out a lot of the impurities. Because it was 'bubbling' on top of the steel it seemed to keep out the external air, but that's just my assumption based on the densities.

Thanks, this seems like my kind of stuff!

EDIT: I found an entry in my diary about the experiment. Twentieth of May, 2011. I actually made two crucibles: open and closed. Steel from the open crucible was quite brittle and my father assessed it as "not as brittle as I would expect pig iron to be" which I (back then) assumed to be close to the steel category. The closed crucible steel had a separated layer of a glass-like substance that smelled a lot like slag but that one was pretty close to actual (usable?) steel.

I've also noted quite a few problems with the process. In retrospect, I remember my father guiding toward those answers. None of the ingredients were roasted (which lead to problems due to residual water in the closed crucible). The sand used to remove excess impurities wasn't even close to fine or pure (I have a note here to try it with bottle glass next time). Now I'm wondering where the hell I put those bits of steel. I know that I didn't throw them away, but I'm rarely careful with the stuff I make.

Wow. I guess that my backyard "let's make some steel out of that haematite I found on a field trip" furnace would put me in grad school. ;)

I don't think a door knob is an example of a simple initiative designed.

I don't mean to denigrate anyone, especially as someone who solves problems for spheres in a vacuum, but that's about three springs, a pair of camshafts (had to look up the name, I hope that's the thing) and a square-base beam that connects both sides. I had to think for a moment about fitting those things in a way it will return to the starting position (hence the springs) but I think that I have a good handle on it.

Is it really too complex of a project for a group of students? What kind of designs you think would be better as training exercises? Please don't think that I'm not taking engineering seriously. It's actually the exact opposite: I thought that I'm not good enough with practical problems to study physics at the engineering programme.

EDIT: As an example of me not being good with practical problems: what I have designed isn't a door knob but a door handle. :P

It wasn't bad, though. The start was fairly standard, you made mistakes and so did your opponent by being too confident about his position. I could feel the pressure and regret about doing things due to an impulse rather than calculation. As the end was coming it's visible that you got much more deliberate. It's also better than many blitzes I've seen. Plus you won by exploiting his undeveloped position that he/she rushed.

If that's a metaphor for life, then it's not as bad as you think it is.

Also, I am so jealous that you can play blitz. I'm one of those weirdos who suck in games under an hour per player but doesn't get tired even in six-hour matches. ;)

This is about as far from your discipline as I can get without bursting into song, but what helped me (and many others) with conducting rigorous proofs on our own was an assurance that there's no such thing like a trivial observation until after you wrote QED. Could be worth a try, at least to get the intern talking.

Two graduate students who work on related substances (but in different configurations to what I'll be doing) here are cautiously optimistic about a thin film that absorbs quite a wide range of the visible spectrum of light. By using it, they can detect what kind of light it is based on the induced currents. Might be a good candidate for an artificial retina, might just be a curious part of a detector. Might be a fluke due to a myriad of factors. That effect was found almost by accident and wasn't what they were researching.

As I said earlier, I'm yet to understand what precisely I will be doing. That's about ten steps away from me being able to say anything about any applications.

On Monday I had a pretty long email exchange with my diploma supervisor. He basically asked me if I have the time this summer to come to the institute to get up to speed now instead of wasting time during the autumn. I agreed, now I'm spending quite a lot of time with the whole group. Next week I'll be issued a separate ID to access this place without needing someone to escort me in and out.

Right now I'm being taught about how stuff works around here, mostly the theory but also how the bulk of the equipment is supposed to be operated. I'll be joined by a few other undergrads in August, so I'm not wasting this undivided attention of some of the researchers there that I am being given and ask about everything. I'm surprised that they aren't visibly tired of me already.

What's the topic? I'll be measuring optical properties of various structures made out of boron nitride interlaced with graphene. Both the derivation of the theory and the design of the experiment are going to be largely my responsibilities. It might not be your standard summer adventure, but this is so much more fun than I had in a long time. The goal is to know what the hell am I doing before October.