Congratulations, Dr. Jafarpour

October 5, 2007

It is well known that MIT, much like many Institutions, is a praise-free zone. I don’t wish to qualify that too much, but let’s just say it is more often true than not.

There are exceptions.

I found one today by accident. Complete surprise. I was in the copy room absentmindedly watching over my boss’ print job and leafing through the PhD thesis of Behnam Jafarpour which happened to be sitting on the copier. It seems like Behnam arrived yesterday, but that’s only because time for me is going a mile a minute right now. He successfully defended his thesis just a few short hours ago, and already is preparing to depart for a teaching job (Houston, I think?).

Anyway, as dense scientific jargon is not something I’m equipped to wade through, I was casually skimming the Acknowledgments page when I spotted my name! There I was, being thanked! Who knew?

My role in Behnam’s success was limited at best. I took care of the usual tedium for him - travel vouchers, software orders, that kind of thing. There was one extended episode regarding tuition at Stanford that I won’t bother rehashing, but what the hell? That’s what I was hired for.

It pleases me that Behnam saw I was doing my best to let him get back to work on the stuff he was really here for. Again, it’s part of the job and what I’m supposed to do, but… yeah. We all have a tendency to seek recognition. I selfishly ran upstairs and went through all the theses of people who have graduated since I’ve been here, and discovered what I guess I already knew: Behnam is thus far the only one who has taken the time to acknowledge in print that I was there to help him through his time at Parsons. That’s pretty hip. Not to mention, it is my first and only time making it into the pages of an MIT Doctoral Thesis. In a nerdy kind of way, I think that’s pretty cool.

So - thanks again, and congratulations, Dr. Jafarpour.

It was my pleasure.

Posted in: MIT 3 Comments »

Research Art

August 13, 2007

A few posts back I mentioned a project I had a hand in here at the lab - Research Art!

There were many blank walls around the lab that I work in. Occasionally someone would hang a poster that they made for a conference, which were sometimes interesting, but more often than not would look a little ridiculous as the corners started to curl and pull off the wall. My new boss (as of last fall) decided that these would no longer be allowed to hang, and instead we would start a program of “research art” - figures, drawings, and other strange items that would be extracted from research materials, stripped of most obvious meaning, and blown up to 20″ x 30″ to be framed and installed around the building. The initial idea leaned more towards taking a graph and removing the legend, but I had different thoughts.

There are a number of great ones that were submitted by people around the lab, but as I didn’t have much of a hand in those (simply polished them up and printed them pretty much as-is), you’ll just have to pay me a visit in order to see them.

As keeper of the poster printer, I end up with everyone’s research posters. They are treasure troves of idiosyncratic little images. Below I’ve posted a few that I found and put up in the lab. Keeping with the original idea, I’m not going to bother explaining what they depict. I’d probably get it wrong anyway.

You should also be aware that these look much cooler in great big frames on the wall. The bulk of them are sharp, colorful, and bold, which is hard to convey here on blogger - especially with the severe JPEG compression that they apply to uploaded photos. Again, though, feel free to pay a visit, and we’ll do a lab walk to savor the art.

This is one of the first ones I did. I don’t really think it is what people were expecting. They were a little bemused at first, but then saw where this was all going and got into it. Of course, there are still those who think it’s all a bit ridiculous. That’s OK.

Another early one. This one didn’t come out so great in print. Might try to reprint it sometime.

This is one that I just did. I think it’s great. Not sure where it’s going to go yet - part of me wants to keep it near my desk, but there’s no good wall space left.

Green spinning things. Whimsical, aren’t they?

I appear to have a penchant for arrows that have been stripped of their meaning by my reckless cropping.

When I asked for submissions, one student got the wrong idea and made a whole research poster conformed to the 20×30 specifications. I felt bad that he didn’t quite get it, and tried to extract something from his poster. I loved this image immediately, but didn’t even bother running it past the Director. I’m willing to bet he’d despise it.

Heh. Pond.

(I don’t know if they made the images themselves, but these were extracted from the research posters of: Khandaker Ashfaque, Jesse Shapiro, Rebecca Neumann, Virginia Rich, and Marcos of the Parsons Lab at MIT)

Posted in: MIT 2 Comments »

Turd Appears on MIT Building

December 12, 2006

I usually miss MIT’s infamous hacks. I am on the other side of campus from the Great Dome, where all the really good ones seem to live. This morning, though, I noticed this apparition on the side of the Stata Center.

It might be a snowman. Or Waldo (as in, “Where’s Waldo?”). Perhaps there is someone giving a lecture somewhere that this relates to.

The real mystery, though, is that brown thing.

Kind of looks like poo.

If you were here you’d notice it gently drifting back and forth in the breeze, and the odd paint job that gives it kind of an uneven, diet-influenced appearance.

I have no idea what this is all about.

Methinks I’m just not clever enough for this school.

(turns out, it was supposed to be Waldo, and that’s supposed to be his cane. his really, really small cane.)

Posted in: MIT, filler, huh? 1 Comment »

Website! Big Roof Picture!

November 28, 2006

Click the image for a larger version -
It’s worth the trouble, if I may say so myself.

After a bit of back-and-forth with the good folks over at GlowHost I now have my new website up and running. It will be a heavily revised version of my old website, chock full of photography and other interesting stuff. Currently it is nothing more than a simple placeholder with the above image, but that’s a start!

I have also been getting surprisingly nice reviews of that image, which admittedly caught me a little off guard. This one was a fairly academic excercise - the second outing with the new Mamiya RB67 that I had purchased to raise the bar on my image quality. The first two rolls were a total bust as I had forgotten many of the steps involved in using such a camera.

Anyway, this fall we had a ton of those great days with no humidity, blue skies, and wonderful clouds. Perfect days for shooting. I snuck up to the roof of my office and fired away, making sure to get all the steps right. I also wanted to see what my depth of field would be, what kind of things I had to watch out for, etc.

This was the best of the bunch. It looks great printed out formally, but I guess the little web-sized version isn’t so bad.

Posted in: MIT, photo 1 Comment »