Atari Punk Circuit

The Atari Punk Circuit was designed as a beginners' project by the venerable Forrest Mims, III. I built it as a prototype of a much grander project still to come, once I get around to making those flex resistor circuits for it. The Atari Punk circuit uses 2 555 integrated circuits (or 1 556), which is a timer circuit, and slaps resistors downstream of the inputs to vary the rate at which it pulses and capacitors on the outputs to modulate that pulse into a continuous and audible waveform. In this iteration I used 2 10K Ohm linear potentiometers as resistors. The 1st one modulates the frequency of the output wave, thus changing pitch; while the 2nd one is bridged across 2 input pins to provide destructive interference and noise upon the 1st wave, thus making buzzy distortion.

Shortly after running it in the video above, I connected this circuit to a power supply without checking what it was set to first, and promptly burnt one of the 555s out. Smoke and everything. Luckily, I have a replacement and will be putting it back together once I've wired up some flex bars in the place of the current linear potentiometers, even though linear potentiometers are dead sexy.

I have no idea how this relates to molecular biology. Yet.

How Not to Flirt #1

Failing to wear pants will likely result in an eyeful of mace or a police report.

NOSTRIL!!!!

Figure A: Toaster had a spare TSAII/5%SB plate. This is 48h normal atmosphere growth of a sterile swab of Toaster's right nostril on 5.4.09. There are just 2 different colony morphologies, which seems too few. Maybe next time sneezing on the plate will be more efficacious.

It's a Holiday! Where's Toaster?

As the higher-ranking nerds among you may know, today is a Very Special Holiday in The Nerdness. For the rest of you more sensible people, it should be clarified that today, May 2nd, is Free Comic Book Day.

Free Comic Book Day began in 2002 as an effort by all the major North American comic book publishers to introduce comics to new markets, promote new titles that we otherwise wouldn't hear about*, and thank the die-hard comic book readers. It falls on the first Saturday of May after the release of a major film adaptation of a comic book (this year's being the Wolverine** X-Men movie) to ride with the heavy film marketing. It is currently being celebrated at Toaster's awesome local comic book shop (they're by the robot part supply store downtown), and Toaster is not there.

Why not?

Because upon every occasion that I go to the comic book store I wind up spending more money than I should. And even though today is Free Comic Book Day, that doesn't mean that every comic is free or reduced in price. I'd wind up walking in, being disappointed with the free comics (usually 8-page promos from Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and IDW; not much of substance or maybe I've always gotten there too late), picking up my subscriptions (Hoxford and Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse [below]), and then wind up buying TPBs and HCs trying in vain to complete the Hellboy, Fell: Feral City, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman series as well as resisting the urge to begin collecting The Walking Dead, Y: The Last Man, or Frank Miller stuff.



This would not be conducive to paying other things, such as rent. And high-ranking nerds, lest ye deem me of lesser street cred because of my non-attendance, let it be noted that without paying rent Toaster would have no shelter and therefore all of the comics and video games he has collected would ruin out in the rain. Also, dearest Amazon, could you please possibly hurry up and ship me the copy of Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons that I bought back in February? Zombies vs. Robots is looking kind of lonely.

*Contrary to what one might expect, Battlepope is actually a well-established title.
**On this note: if any of you lived in the X-Men universe (any of them), which character would you want to be? You may not choose a Skrull.

Nerd Frame 2: The Continuance

7415 3n71r3 p057 w1ll b3 wr1773n 3n 13375p34|<.

4c7u4lly, 1 d0n'7 h4v3 7h3 p4t93nc3 70 d0 7h47, 7h3r34: 4p0l0G135

To those of you who could easily read the above 2 lines: congratulations, you're a nerd. That isn't to say that everyone else who couldn't read them isn't a nerd, just that they've different specialties.

One of the tensions between intellectuals and wider society is that society prescribes a single nerd frame to all nerds irrespective of our diversity. This allows society to get away with marginalizing us stereotypically as unhygienic, cerebral, and weak while we feel unfairly smashed into ill-fitting frames. This dysfunctional dynamic perpetuates nerd isolation and insulation.

In my previous post on this subject, the commentators suggested that nerds are socially isolated because we are unable to climb out of the deep wells of our minds.

But what if the problem is not internal with us, but rather external in that we have no where to climb to?

As nerds we are accused of being insular and having wolf-pack social dynamics (small groups of like-minded nerds with clear hierarchies [who's the PI? who's the most 1337?]). We're also accused of being aloof eggheads with no communication skills. Both of these are true to at least some extent.

Since society is depend upon us nerds for technology, science, medicine, and George Lucas' box office success, why is the onus upon us to make ourselves understandable? It it probably overly idealistic, but I don't think it's unreasonable for society to at least meet us halfway and learn some of our scientific dogma. We as scientists are charged with creating knowledge and disseminating it to the public (which we do to varying degrees of success), but there comes a point at which the knowledge we create simply cannot be watered down any more*. But when we fail to communicate the relevance of what we do to a lazy society, we're just labeled as nerds in the derogatory sense and written off to our labs and equipment.

This is frustrating, and I am frustrated. I want so badly to be able to educate the public, to inspire critical thinking, to share the depth with which I view the world**, at least see questions deeper than "Uh, like, boogers!". But in the end I can't escape my own nerdness. I lack a socially normal frame through which to communicate. I don't have a way to relate to wider society. Save a few well-placed strong blows to my head, I can't un-educate myself and that education has tempered my thinking.

But when coming back to whose frame is best, nerds' or society's, it now boils down to education. If more people were more educated, society's mean frame would move closer to the nerd frame. Then we, as nerds doing science, would be able to keep the flow of information and dialogue going less one-sidedly. It'd be a net bonus.

However, this brings up another question that I'm going to pose to you: does education increase nerdness or is nerdness an inherent and immutable personality trait?

*This is where alternative medicine pseudoscientific quackery is conceived and born.
**Or at least as I like to think so.

Nerd Frame 1

Do we, as science nerds, alienate others as a matter of course? If so, is this a defensive mechanism or a simple inability to climb out of our minds and relate to non-nerds?

I'm not trying to claim that all science nerds are awkward introverts, just some of us. There seem to be some scientists who are very very good at interacting with normal people, but there are just as many, if not more, who wander around public places looking either very confused or somewhat huddled into themselves.

Let's be honest: human social communication is so deep and complex and, frankly, damned weird that some of us will choose to immerse ourselves in protein interaction kinetics instead of going to parties.

What do you think?

(There's a point here that I'll get to later.)

Nerd

Those who know me in person harbor no doubts as to me being a complete and total nerd. Although my nerdiness stops short of D&D, I do play things like Laser Chess and Zombies. However, once in a while, I do something that I later notice as being particularly nerdy or indicative of my nerdiness. I was composing a hip-hop/dance anthem on my computer and built it all up to a very intense drum and bass breakdown. The nerdiness struck when it occurred to me to insert an accordian-driven breakdown into the other breakdown and I thought it sounds awesome. I'm leaving it in there.

Theorem

N = Xn * Ds

N is equal to the local perception of normalcy
Xn is equal to the number of nerds within that given locality
Ds is the degree of social deprivation of said nerds.

Basically, this postulates that the greater number of nerds present in a given area, the more distorted the normal-ness of the reality within that area will be. This postulate assumes no dichotomy between nerds, geeks, and dorks, but rather assumes all to be equal.

This postulate is empirical. It may be proved by gathering a massive number of nerds, all very socially deprived, into one area (must be well stocked with high-speed internet, soldering irons, and lots of chemicals) and seeing what happens.