A quick update about what has been happening since Oct. 2011:

• I graduated from MIT!
• I'm going to grad school at UC Berkeley in the Fall!
• I'm working on CMS for the summer at CERN :) Gotta find more Higgs-like bosons!
• The Cosmic Ray Chandelier site is up at http://blondegeek.net/cosmicray/

Back to work!

Labels: berkeley, MIT

Posted by Tess |

It's Family Weekend at MIT! The parents are everywhere, and I had the pleasure of making a presentation to a bunch of them (specifically the bunch associated with physics-lings) on Friday about my research in Neutrino Physics. Click the image below to see the slides. The images of the smiley neutrinos come from Particle Zoo - where you can buy plushies of the Standard Model and beyond!



The talk was a lot of fun. The parents had questions about the CERN-OPERA neutrino result, why neutrinos oscillate, how long have we known about neutrinos, and many others. Alright, bed time for me. I took the physics GRE this morning and am now starting to feel the effects of my 7 o'clock wake-up.

Peace. Love. Neutrinos!

Labels: Fermilab, MIT, physics

Posted by Tess |

Describe the world you come from, for example your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations?

I live in two places at once. This is not because I have miraculously achieved a new method to manipulate space-time, but instead because my rural, secluded hometown of Bonsall and the bustling, lively area of San Diego County, surrounding Bonsall, are each homes to separate parts of my personality.

I’ve lived in Bonsall my entire life, in a house atop a grassy, tangerine tree covered hill surrounded by rolling hills and natural silence. Growing up as an only child, I have always entertained myself by satisfying my curiosity. This curiosity has developed into my constant quest for knowledge and my love to express myself by bringing my ideas into physical form.

My parents have always encouraged me and given me the freedom to explore any subject I like: I have made documentaries of local junior sailing events, built two computers (named Hal and Athen), assembled an eight-inch Dobsonian telescope, launched a website and web store (www.blondegeek.net), and I continue to feed my passion for physics and mathematics with growing piles of books. I jazz things up and “bass” about, make a complete mess of the dining room table with scraps of my latest sewing project, and tear up the local trails on my dirt bike.

My interests branch out from one another. Once I became a dedicated “trekker”, I started to develop a quickly growing interest in the cosmos, particles, and theoretical physics. After completing a quilt square for a 7th grade English project, I was ecstatic to realize that I could bring the clothing designs that filled the margins of my notebooks to life. All my hobbies seem to originate from similar happenstances.

Since I’ve been able to drive about the dynamic county of San Diego for the past year, many of my interests have extended far beyond the borders of Bonsall and I’ve become quite a social butterfly, fluttering about the neighboring cities and towns. I’ve met an entire “band” of people including my bass teacher, my current boss, and several friends through playing bass guitar with the Palomar Community College Jazz Ensemble and I’ve just begun to venture into Discrete Mathematics at another local community college. I never know where these new adventures will take me, but I know I’ll always learn something and meet new, amazing people. For these reasons, I consider the entirety of San Diego - its streets, freeways, cities, taco shops and beaches - as home, fostering my on-going passions.

While living in my personal space of Bonsall and the community of San Diego, I’ve created many goals for myself. Some are big, many are small, but all are possible. I want to journey to outer space, record a jazz album, write a hit science fiction movie that will inspire the next generation, sell a million shirts, sew a pair of pants, discover other dimensions that defy all known theories of spacetime and inspire others! I want to challenge my beliefs, thoughts, and abilities and use that knowledge to make a difference in the world, to leave it a little bit better than before. Then I’ll come back to Bonsall and stand on my old back porch and smile to myself as I remember that this is where it all started.

Labels: college essays, MIT, procrastination of homework, projects, summer

Posted by Tess |

Caltech students have long been known for their quirky sense of humor and creative pranks and for finding unusual ways to have fun. What is something that you find fun or humorous?

My dad and I use to sail Solings with the Mission Bay Yacht Club Soling Fleet. Our fleet had a reputation for being a rather rambunctious bunch that was always having fun. An example of this behavior was a harmless little prank we pulled on a friend and fellow Soling sailor Ian from Orcas Isle, Washington who would come down once or twice a year to race with our fleet.

Around Thanksgiving of 2001, our fleet was going to race in Long Beach and Ian and his crew were coming down to race with us. Ian was also going to take his boat and van that he had left the year before down in San Diego back to Orcas. During that past year the boat and van had been shuffled between fleet members, who would keep it at their house until the neighbors complained. The van was after all an ancient vehicle with a fading, splotchy, multi-hue, powder blue paint job.

Growing tired of the van’s physically unappealing condition or perhaps just seeing the opportunity for mischief, a couple members of our fleet had decided that it was high time to reinvent the van’s image by painting it PINK. So, the van had been painted the most annoying, Barbie bright, uncomfortable shade of pink right before it was to be reunited with Ian.

Ian’s reaction went something like this:
“So, where’s the van?”
“Over there.”
“You mean behind that pink…Oh my God!”

Since then, Pink Van has been a symbol for the vivacity and dark humor of our Soling Fleet and in that tradition Ian left the Pink Van down in San Diego for another year.

*****************************************

And the picture to go with the story. I'm sitting on the roof.

Labels: college essays, procrastination of homework, summer

Posted by Tess |

Since I'm on the theme of looking back here are some cached blondegeek pages from way back when. I can't seem to find a cached version of the first blondegeek site and there are definitely some redesigns in between these.

Many of the image links are totally broken, but if you go to animations on Version 4, you can see one of my ridiculous first flash animations with llamas dancing to "Love Shack".

Version 2 - 2004
Version 3 - 2004
Version 4 - 2005
Version 5 - 2007

Labels: procrastination of homework, spare time, summer

Posted by Tess |

Don't worry, Proust is not involved in this post.

I'm currently in San Diego, savoring sunshine before heading back to MIT. Being home has understandably caused an uproar of nostalgia in me. I've been looking through old notebooks, old essays, and other props of my middle and high school years. I figure it's a good way to look at how I've changed (or not changed) over the past 3 years of being at MIT - a good thing to consider heading into scholarship, fellowship and graduate school application season.

So what have I found? T-shirt designs that haven't (yet) made it to the printers, widgets waiting to be built, a finger-painting of a koi fish eating asteroids... you know, ordinary tokens of childhood. It's been very fun digging through my old things, so I thought I'd document this recollection. Maybe you'll find it fun too.

First the finger-painted koi fish. I finger-painted this after taking the SAT - by far the best way to rebel against the creativity-crushing nature of standardized tests.


I'm not sure what the arrow is suppose to represent, and the asteroids look more like burnt popcorn. But, I certainly remember having a great time reveling in an art form that I hadn't practiced since kindergarten.

I'll post some juicy undergraduate college essays later.

Labels: exciting times, itch, MIT, pictures, procrastination of homework

Posted by Tess |

Posted by Tess |

Just talked to the printers today. I should be shipping out all back orders by the beginning of next week.

Posted by Tess |

Howdy! Finally compiles a digital copy of most of my work during studio this semester. I unfortunately lost a lot of my renderings that I made on the school comps, but I still had print outs which is better than nothing. Take a look HERE. NOTE: The file is 12 MB.

Posted by Tess |