Ralph Waldo Emerson

Diary,


Professor Burke asked me to put together the rule book for the group in a Latex document about how to manage your material on the group server.  I'll have more on that later.

While doing so, he dropped this: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of tiny minds" which is a dynamite quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  After reading the entire essay, Self-Reliance, I now see that a lot of Professor Burke's insistence on being independent in your research has an intellectual brother in Emerson's writing.

Because I know you're a hipster, Diary, and wouldn't like me quoting the well known stuff, I'll give you my three favorite snippets:


"If I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil"
"Your goodness must have some edge to it, —else it is none."
"As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds"

Man, I feel like that last one everyday.  The worst part about this essay as that no matter how much I am attracted to it, I can never pick it up as my personal creed.  The whole point of it is to not blindly believe in anything...that means I can't even believe the people who are not blindly believing in anything!  So meta!

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say `I think,' `I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere.


Real subversive stuff! Till next time, Diary!

Burkely Quarterly

Yo, Diary.

What a week!  I put you together, made a folder for new people, and wrote my weeklies.  That is, pulling my daily notes ('dailies') into one weekly bundle!

I also submitted to the Burkely Quarterly (/pbe/gamma/elib/tex/proj/[initials]/1page)!  I formatted everything down to one page, got some people to look over it, and even put some nice little frames on the figures.  Hopefully the reviewers like it as much as I do!

Raphael wants me to give the group presentation next Tuesday.  Yikes!  I barely have anything done.  Unfortunately, I can't use you again, Diary.  I want to have something new each time I present so it looks like I'm making progress.

Posters

Dear Diary,

Justin and Lucas are headed to a conference soon!  I happened to eavesdrop on their conversation about how to print posters.  I went ahead and added a poster template to the beginning's students sample folder on pbe.

Bon voyage, bros!

Happy Birthday, Walter Kohn!

Dear Diary,

We've all been given an assignment to create a one page, journal style article on a tidbit from our research to submit to the Burkely Quarterly.  I have decided to do this on a small project that Lucas has given me.  I don't think it's anything new, but I enjoyed thinking about it.  It will make a nice one page read for the in-group reviewer and a great exercise to practice submitting a paper to an established journal.

I put a template for the assignment in the new person folder on pbe.

Our group meeting today was full of useful information.  Professor Burke got promoted and wants to take us to dinner. John isn't invited since he hasn't paid Kieron back for a breakfast yet.  The new people must wait some time to prove themselves.  Aurora isn't available since she leaves on Friday.  Lucas is gone on Wednesday, and Raphael isn't back yet.  Miles is also leaving soon for the Canadian perimeter. Despite all of this, Professor Burke will be eating dinner tonight.

Miles gave a really good final synopsis of the work that he and Lucas have done so far.  There are a few snags in the code that wants to work out before leaving.

Professor Burke also told us all about Walter Kohn's 90th birthday celebration.  There were a lot of famous physicists there and Professor Burke wants us to pull a big surprise for him and all his friends when he is 90.

Oh, and diary, you're going online.

Notes and Computers

Dear Diary,

The group Computer Whiz has set me up with several computers.  First, there is a computer that he works on.  I am to run all the code for that on this computer.  Second, there is a software hub on the internet named GitHub that the group uses to make available its software.  There are also several big computers to run larger codes that I can use if I make something that big.

Now, there is also a server called pbe (PBE is a functional that Professor Burke made with two of his friends...we'll have to talk about that later, diary!) that is public for everyone in the group.  So, work that I create needs to be on that server.  Professor Burke says that if I'm hit by a bus, then the next, younger, brighter, and more machine-like student should be able to pick up my current research in a snap.

I have my own personal folder under the home directory marked by my username.  I've formatted it so I can find things easily in there.  I also need to make sure that a copy of all the work is under /home/pbe/gamma where everyone else's stuff is.

My first project

Dear Diary,

Professor Burke wants me to take a warm up project to start off with.  His prized student Lucas and post-doc Miles are comparing what Density Functional theory looks like in 1D against the highly accurate DMRG.  The end goal is to find lessons on how to apply DFT in three dimensions with these comparisons.

One project, which seems to be lurking around in pieces on the group server is an investigation with expellium (exponential interaction + jellium) where the regular Coulomb interaction has been replaced by an exponential interaction.  I am to find all the pieces of this project and formulate a paper on it before August.

As a part of a weekly, individual meeting with Professor Burke, I should type up an individual meeting note and send it to him.  I included a sample of my first note in the new person folder on pbe for new students.  It's located inside the Beginner's Guide.