So If You Lived In A Society Where You Had To Secure Your Communication In Order To Be Yourself Around

Fun fact: the plural form of octopus is actually octopodes (oct-op-o-tees) since octopus isn’t an English word nor a Latin word. Octopuses would be the English form if octopus was an English word. Octopi would be the plural form if octopus was a Latin word. However, octopus is a Greek word which means that the grammatically correct plural form of octopus is octopodes.

Recently, I read a research paper by Professor Manu Prakash from Stanford who has been working on a computer that works on fluid droplets and it is extremely fascinating.

Manipulating Matter

Inspiration: The computers that we have at our home are capable of manipulating Information, but they cannot manipulate Physical matter per se! Ergo, build a device that could process both information and physical matter simultaneously.

The setup is actually relatively simple to understand but the working is a bit tricky. They use a ferrofluid as the droplet and control the way it behaves with a circular magnetic field.

Through the coupling of magnetic and hydrodynamic interaction forces between droplets, AND,OR,XOR,NOT and NAND logic gates, fanouts, full adder, a flip flop and a finite state machine is implemented.

If this is the sort of thing that you are interested in, I strongly recommend you read their paper.

The bigger goal

“We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers or to operate word processors on this,”

Prakash said. “Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed but physical matter is algorithmically manipulated as well. We have just made this possible at the mesoscale.”

Have a great day!

- part of ‘Fluid Friday’ series

Did you know that 2015 equals 11111011111 in binary, a palindrome?

Oh, and by the way, on May 15th, 2015 at 02:09:25 UTC, Unix time will be 1010101010101010101010101010101.

concentrate on becoming your best self rather than trying to be somebody else

hey reblog this if you think girls can study and excel in computer science

tumblrfolk, we are so much more skilled than we think

one thing I want to say today relates to my current job. (As you guys know, I’ve left off working in science labs to work an office job in sci comm. My role is kind of … nebulous and involves a lot of “oh, Elodie can help you with that, she does weird stuff. Train Elodie on that.”)

Because it’s an office job, the mentality is for everyone to present their workflows as incredibly difficult and skilled, requiring a lot of training and experience to do properly. Which is fair enough! These skills are difficult!

“Elodie, today we are going to train you to use… A HIGHLY COMPLICATED AND DIFFICULT WEBSITE INTERFACE. You will need to take a lot of notes and pay careful attention, because it is extremely advanced. ARE YOU READY”

“… This is Wordpress.” “…No it isn’t! it says something different at the top. And it’s very complicated, it’s not something you can just know already.” “Nah son, don’t worry, it’s Wordpress. I mean, God knows I don’t blog much, but I can manage me a bit of Wordpress, it’s cool.”

“No. You can’t. Don’t worry, it’s very difficult. Now sit still and be trained on how to upload a photo to Wordpress.”

“All right.”

—-

“Elodie, do you think that you can MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA? It is INCREDIBLY HARD and may involve THE HASHTAGS”

“… I think I’ll manage.”

—-

“Elodie, can you put a HYPERLINK in a thing? Think about it before you answer.”

“Is it like a BBCode kind of thing, with the boxy bracket things, or do you want it in HTML, with like angley bracket things?”

“It is a button that you press that says HYPERLINK.”

“I can do this thing for you.”

—-

“Elodie, can you write a punchy summary that will make people want to click on a special link that says “read more” to read all of the text?“

“Probably?”

—-

“Elodie, this is how to use TAGS on CONTENT. TAGS on CONTENT are important because - because of THINGS. Things that are too arcane and mysterious for anyone below the level of Manager to know.”

“Cool, I can tag stuff for you.”

—-

“Elodie, this is obviously a ridiculous question, but can you edit videos?”

“Not very well, and only if you want to make it look like there is sexual tension between characters from different forms of visual media, or perhaps to make a trailer for a fanfiction? Which is not necessarily a good use of my time and I’m not sure why I felt it was so cool to do to begin with…”

“What?”

“Actually, upon further reflection: no. No. Nope. I can’t edit videos. They’re completely beyond me. Not in my wheelhouse. Hate videos. Hate them. No innate skill whatsoever.”

“That’s what we thought”

—-

“Elodie?! You can use PHOTOSHOP?!”

“Yeah, I mean, I usually just use Pixlr. It’s free, it’s online, it’s powerful, you don’t have to download anything…”

“but you are not a GRAPHIC DESIGNER!!” “Er… no.”

“Next you’ll be telling us you can MAKE AN ANIMATED PICTURE.”

“I mean, I haven’t really done a lot of it since Livejournal, and they weren’t that good anyway, but yeah… I can do you reaction images.”

“THAT IS WITCHCRAFT”

“Yes. Definitely.”

—-

What I’m trying to say is: a lot of people talk a lot of crap about what we Millenials do on the Internet, because there is NO CAPITALISTIC VALUE in the screwing around we do with our friends. “Ughh why are you ALWAYS on the computer?” our parents whined.

“How did you make the text go all slanty like that?” our bosses wonder.

We have decades of experience in Photoshop. We know how to communicate; we can make people across the planet care about our problems. We know how to edit media to make two characters look like they’re having the sexual tensions. We can make people read our posts, follow us, share our content. We run and manage our own websites - and make them pretty. We moderate conversations, enforce commenting policies, manage compromises, lead battles, encourage peace, defend ourselves from attack, inspire others, and foster incredible levels of communication.

We produce our art. We advertise our art. We engage with others through our art. We accept constructive criticism and dismiss destructive trolling of our art. We improve our art. Our art gets better.

We narrate our stories.

All by ourselves. Our pretty blog backgrounds, custom-edited themes, tasteful graphics, punchy content, clever gifs, our snappy putdowns and smart-ass text posts, even our familiarity with fonts and composition - all of these skills we’ve casually accumulated for fun/approval are MINDBLOWING LEVELS OF COMPETENCE IN THE WORKFORCE.

When these skills are sold to you - when they’re packaged and marketed, and when you pay to consume them and have the Elders rate you on them - they are incredibly valuable. They are Media and Communications degrees. They are marketing internships. They are leadership workshops. They are graphics design modules. They are web design courses. They are programming courses. We are good at this shit; we have it nailed down.

You can’t put “fandom” or “blogging” on your CV, but you deserve to. You should get this credit. You should claim this power and authority.

Claim these skills. They are valuable. They are important.

Everything you have ever done is a part of your powerful makings.

real talk tho you might feel like you aren’t doing enough or you’re behind or you haven’t set yourself up well enough and you aren’t in the right place but you can still work it out and there are beautiful, amazing things ahead of you. two years ago I had a 2.8, was on the verge of losing my scholarship, had no idea how to study, and wouldn’t have been able to handle a research position even if I knew how to get one. now I’m working in a lab, have tons of research experience, co-authored a publication, have an amazing advisor who is helping me with a honors thesis, and am set to do eight months of paid research abroad next semester. (and the 2.8 is now a 3.6). it’s not over, it can get better, you aren’t a failure, and wonderful things are waiting.

Keeping The Same Tabs Open For 9 Days Straight Because They Contain Information Relevant To Tasks You’re Too Lazy To Complete - A novel by me