Reflections on Grad School: Tools and Tricks I wish I knew all along

Posted on by mrsoltys
I've done it! I've gotten my Ph.D.!  Here's a few things I wish I had done from the very beginning. Enjoy Yourself. You're going to take 4-8 years investing in yourself. This is time you've set aside to educate yourself about a subject you're hopefully passionate about.  Along the way, you'll learn a tonne about a multitude of subjects! Besides...Read More

Smartphone App: Google Hangouts

Posted on by mrsoltys
I've loved my mobile phone since switched to android from iPhone; however, there's been one basic thing that's been missing: A good text messaging app. [caption id="attachment_1435" align="alignright" width="168"] Hangouts has a clean chat like interface for messaging with multiple people.[/caption] Sure, I've tried a few in the play store: handcent sms and go sms to name a couple, but...Read More

My Thesis Defense and other updates

Posted on by mrsoltys
Sorry the blog has been on the back-burner for a couple months. My thesis defense will be open to the public: Wednesday, November 13th at 2pm.  It will be held in the benson earth sciences building conference room (Benson 380) near Folsom and Colorado. Saturday a cup of coffee got spilled on my laptop. I was thankful for dropbox, but everything...Read More

Smartphone App: MTB project

Posted on by mrsoltys
[caption id="attachment_1413" align="alignleft" width="300"] This is an awesome woman. I'm very very blessed.[/caption] Courtney and I recently took a trip for our 1-yr anniversary out to summit county.  If you didn't know: Summit county is awesome in late september because the aspens are amazing: Also, everything's cheap because it's the off season: from being able to get a condo for...Read More

Whats going on with the Government shutdown

Posted on by mrsoltys
After reading a lot of ignorance in the media and on Facebook, I wanted to clearly try to sum up what's going on with the government shutdown.  If I'm mistaken on any of this, please let me know (with a reference) in the comments section and I'll edit this post. The Affordable Care Act was made law in 2012.  It...Read More

28 Best apps for Mac

Posted on by mrsoltys
I recently did a reset on my Mac, and had to re-download all of my favorite Apps.  This was actually a pretty painless process, but I thought a useful post might be all the top apps for Mac I think are worth having on my machine. These arn't really in a particular order: Dropbox Google Chrome MATLAB MacTeX Latexian Mendeley...Read More

How to calculate the 100-year flood

Posted on by mrsoltys
There are a number of ways to calculate the 1 in 100 flood, some more complicated than others. This simple way does a great job of explaining the basics (and the shortcomings behind the metric).  First we start with historical data, and we need a good chunk of it. Since we're in Boulder I'm going to use the Boulder Creek @...Read More

About 100 year floods (and probabilities, and risk analysis)

Posted on by mrsoltys
I'm based in Boulder, and it's flooding.  Luckily, we're all fine here. Flooding is kind of a weird natural disaster.  First: It doesn't feel very threatening: It's just raining outside... a lot. But it does post some serious risks and deserves to be taken seriously. 100 year floods (Should be called: the 1% flood) [caption id="attachment_1348" align="alignright" width="300"] Near Boulder Creek...Read More

Power strip energy usage

Posted on by mrsoltys
10% of household energy usage is consumed by consumer electronics on standby.  Given that the average energy usage for an american household is about 30 kwh every day (940 kwh per month), this means that 3 kwh/day ($7.25/month @ $0.08098/kwh) is wasted energy. You can look up just how much various devices use on standby: obviously it's going to be a...Read More