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Configuring Programs in Memory In the early stages of embedded software development, it is essential to understand how information is going to flow through the entire embedded system at multiple levels, perhaps starting with a block diagram of the system’s overall functionality and working down to its instantiation in electrical-computational components. An integral step in this process is understanding the types of memory available to you as a programmer and how whatever program(s) you end up writing are going to be executed at a physical level. This might seem rather tedious, but I actually find it to be one of the most intellectually exciting partsRead More →

Graph Theory for Quantum Field Theory, Renormalization, Space Navigation, and Prisoner Rehabilitation Congratulations! You presumably made it through the exceptionally long title of this post. If we take title verbosity to be positively correlated with post import, then the length here is justified. I’m embarking on a long-term adventure: to bring together some of my interests. My motivation is pragmatic, more than theoretical, even though many are driven to unify their work and theories from aesthetic considerations; there’s a tendency to judge a complex union of distinctions to be inelegant (To this I might reply: Is an intricately-branching oak tree inelegant?). From a practical standpoint,Read More →

20 Years of Big Ideas, Compressed I recently turned 30, and as part of my celebration, I’m going to do a whirlwind tour through some of the ideas that have fascinated me and enriched my life in the last 20 years (Yes, I was a fairly contemplative 10-year-old;-).). I recommend setting aside more time than usual to consume this post or to divide reading between a couple of sessions. First, a little bit of ideas-meta about the personal context in which the ideas have been embedded. Foremost, I am tremendously grateful for the force of curiosity in my life. In my now decades-long engagement withRead More →

Isomorphism: An Underutilized Concept Today’s subject is a one-off I’ve been meaning to write for all of 2021. Being in the thick of consumerism season (i.e. the month of December) makes this an especially appropriate time to share it. Also, I have the day off to stretch some of my neurons that have been sidelined for a bit, so here we are. The word ‘isomorphism’ belongs originally (modulo Greek etymology) to the language of mathematics, but the concept that the word represents and whose definition it makes precise is a useful one in many other contexts. One angle from which to approach what this wordRead More →

Avoiding Virtue Signaling and Rescuer Mindset I’m going to be quiet in this post and propagate the articulate words of Nova Reid: among other things, a reminder that treating people with dignity, respect, and friendship across racial and other differences requires viewing others as your fundamental equals as human beings. Solidarity, not charity!Read More →

Writing My Artist Statement I need to write an artist statement for a project coming up in November 2021 (Don’t worry, I will spam everyone with much more on this in October!). One could make a pretty compelling argument that I ought to have written one much sooner than this—and not just for my poetic stuff, but for visual, musical, and sci-fi creative efforts, too. Nonetheless, I’m happy for a specific reason to put one together that involves satisfying an existing need within the literary community. What makes a good artist statement? As a particularist, I say that it depends on the purpose of theRead More →

Quantum Field Theory: Perturbation Series At the end of the last post introducing the physics of particle collisions and scattering, we introduced a formula for computing the cross section of a collision process. The essential idea of the formula is that cross section is computed as the product of the surface area of a particle detector and the quantum mechanical amplitude of a particular outcome. Remember, we’re considering outcomes of particle collisions to be the particles produced along with properties of where they are in space. For example, in the electron-positron annihilation case, we’re considering outcomes to be the possible configurations of muons produced andRead More →

Quantum Field Theory: Particle Collisions At this point in the series on renormalization, we are going to switch from a high-level view into a deep dive into physical foundations. For this, I am going to become mostly unoriginal and follow Peskin & Schroeder’s popular text, An Introduction To Quantum Field Theory, which contains an entire section on renormalization. We still have a ways to go before getting there, however, and as we go there will be a lot of my own conceptual insertions as I, too, puzzle my way through the material. I intend to enjoy myself throughout the journey, but we can derive extraRead More →

Renormalization Background: The Lagrangian Method, a Worked Example [Preamble for down-to-Earth context: I’ve been meaning to finish this post every lunch hour this week and unmindfully decided to job-work instead. Fortunately there are pretty much zero worldly distractions at 5:15am on a Sunday during the COVID-19 pandemic! Just me and the birds.:-)] This post is an optional stop on the trip to examining renormalization in the context of electromagnetic fields. It will contain a little bit of formal mathematics, and there’s no way around that. I recommend that you know basically what derivatives and partial derivatives are, even if you don’t know techniques for workingRead More →

Background: Quantum Theory of Electromagnetism: Hamiltonian Dynamics Since we’re now being good physicists in this series by working to understand what’s happening in various electromagnetic systems, in the last post we looked at one very important type of measurement we can make on such systems. For many purposes, that basic measurement might provide all the framing for a question that we need; from there, we can compute all of the specific quantities of interest. That measurement, the Lagrangian, is formulated in terms of the system’s kinetic and potential energy: . From there, we’re going to look at another measurement that can be derived from theRead More →