2004 AI MSc Physics/Teacher/Programmer 2005 Physics M.Phil. 2003to2008
~ Me@2002
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This history has unfolded with 70% accuracy.
— Me@2022-10-12 05:45:41 PM
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2022.10.12 Wednesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Category Archives: Physicist
Recommendation letter
I hate the “recommendation letter” system.
It wastes a lot of my professors’ time and mine.
— Me@2011.10.10
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2022.02.21 Monday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
太極滅世戰 2.1
似水流年 2.2
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還記得童年時不太開心，好像沒有太多事情，令我快樂。換句話說，即是過得沉悶。一方面喜歡讀書，另一方面卻緊張成績，終日惶恐。
近乎唯一娛樂就是看電視。那時，我還沒有電腦，更加沒有互聯網。那時，沒有什麼金錢買玩具。就算有新玩具，我有時會想：「怎麼辦呢？ 很快又會厭倦。」
中二開始，發覺對數學幾有興趣。
中途又有些所謂的嗜好，例如集郵，其實沒有意義。相對沒有那麼無聊的，有電腦遊戲。我的摯愛有 Simcity 2000 和 Chrono Trigger 等。但那也只是暫時的快樂，仍未能為我生活，帶來意義；遊戲完結時，感到額外的空虛。
中四上物理時，不知何故，精神上，有一點清涼暢快的感覺。那就代表著，疑似喜歡物理。但是，不知何故，幾乎凡是需要物理思考的題目，我都不懂得做。
一九九六年，逛書店時，看到有一本書叫《時間簡史》。我同學說：「這書（內容）就是你最喜愛的那些東西。」那時，我尚未有觸動心靈的感覺，所以不以為意，沒有購買。
那年暑假，看了香港太空館天象廳的《輪椅中的宇宙》，十分震撼。我大概記得，那是我自己一個去看，沒有朋友一起。
從紀錄片中，我認識了霍金，知道了《時間簡史》的來源。不久之後，我買了《時間簡史》，企圖一口氣讀完它。過程中，我有惶恐不安的感覺。原因不是書中內容，而是我沒有閱讀的習慣。換句話說，《時間簡史》令我開始了，培養閱讀的習慣。
《輪椅中的宇宙》和《時間簡史》令我發現，我的人生目標是物理。
但是，我自中三開始，那些物理題目，真是不太懂做呀。空有目標，沒有執行之道。
其實，我那時沒有也辦法，因為，我日校物理教師，講物理講得十分有趣，而我又有留心聽講。如果在這個情況下，我仍然不懂的話，那大概是我的智力問題。
幸好，後來發現，那不是事實。至起碼，中五會考物理，並不需要高智力，也可以奪得 A 級成績。十多年後，在自己有足夠的讀書和教學經驗後，我發現，我當年不懂做題目，主因是日校物理教師，只談理論，不會教題目細節。甚至，有些課題，例如電學，連他自己也根本不太認識。
一九九六年的那個暑假，我開始參加 Ken Chan 的物理補習班，開始一步一步的，解決了「空有目標，沒有執行之道」這問題。
有了「做物理學家」這長遠目標後，我感到人生不再一樣，雖然，我讀書的日常生活，仍然十分混亂，
— Me@2020-07-27 07:33:45 AM
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2020.08.03 Monday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Time stops
“Time stops” mean things other than yourself stop.
If “time stops” mean all the things, including you, stop,
then you cannot feel the stopping of time.
— Me@2010.03.08
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2011.03.09 Wednesday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK
Me
My self-summary
I am a physicist by nature, an educator by miracle, and a writer by destiny. — Me@2010.09.21
What I’m doing with my life
Transforming myself by transforming other people’s lives. — Me@2010.09.21
I’m really good at
… being amazing. — Me@2010.09.21
The first things people usually notice about me
I am always with my Palm computer. — Me@2010.09.21
Favorite books, movies, shows, music, and food
Contact（超時空接觸）
Life is Beautiful（一個快樂的傳說）
Back to the Future（回到未來）
— Me@2000
I spend a lot of time thinking about
Physics and Love
Dear Mrs. Chown,
Ignore your son’s attempts to teach you physics. Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is.
Best wishes,
Richard Feynman
— Me@2010.09.21
The most private thing I’m willing to admit
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
— Albert Einstein
You should message me if
… you are curious about the world and you value joy, truth, beauty and justice more than “success”.
— Me@2010.09.21, Based on Richard Stallman
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2011.03.05 Saturday (c) ACHK
Nerd 4
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I thought it would be useful if I explained what a nerd was. What I came up with was: someone who doesn’t expend any effort on marketing himself.
A nerd, in other words, is someone who concentrates on substance. So what’s the connection between nerds and technology? Roughly that you can’t fool mother nature. In technical matters, you have to get the right answers.
— Paul Graham
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2011.02.09 Wednesday ACHK
Twelve Monkeys
Themes
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Memory, time, and technology
“Cole has been thrust from another world into ours and he’s confronted by the confusion we live in, which most people somehow accept as normal. So he appears abnormal, and what’s happening around him seems random and weird. Is he mad or are we?”
— Director Terry Gilliam
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12 Monkeys studies the subjective nature of memories and their effect upon perceptions of reality. Examples of false memories include:
* Cole’s recollection of the airport shooting which is altered each time he has a dream.
* A “mentally divergent” man at the asylum who has false memories.
* Railly telling Cole “I remember you like this” when a barely recognizable Cole and Railly are seen in disguise for the first time.
References to time, time travel, and monkeys are scattered throughout the film, including the Woody Woodpecker “Time Tunnel” cartoon playing on the TV in a hotel room, The Marx Brothers movie Monkey Business (1931) on TV in the asylum and the subplots of monkeys (drug testing, news stories and animal rights). The film is also a study of modern civilization’s declining efforts to communicate with each other due to the interference of technology.
— Wikipedia on 12 Monkeys
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2011.01.23 Sunday ACHK
A cluttered desk
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If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then, is an empty desk?
— Albert Einstein
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2010.12.23 Thursday ACHK
Physics and French literature
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Q: I disagree with your generalization that physicists are smarter than professors of French Literature.
A: Try this thought experiment. A dictator takes over the US and sends all the professors to re-education camps. The physicists are told they have to learn how to write academic articles about French literature, and the French literature professors are told they have to learn how to write original physics papers. If they fail, they’ll be shot. Which group is more worried?
— Paul Graham
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2010.11.19 Friday ACHK
開山祖師牛 4
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Don’t follow me. I’m lost too …
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If you are not lost, you are not a leader.
You are not lost only if you have someone else to follow.
— Me@2010.11.14
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2010.11.15 Monday
開山祖師牛 2
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* I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. We do not find signposts at crossroads, but our own scouts erect them, to help the rest.
o Experiment and Theory in Physics (1943), p. 44
— Max Born
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If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
— Albert Einstein
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2010.11.08 Monday ACHK
Principles 4
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25 I started to be able to organize my information.
27 I started to be able to get rid of my OCD 80%.
28 I started to able to understand “principles”, i.e. “follow the natural laws”.
— Me@2010.02.23
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2010.11.01 Monday (c) ACHK
Annus mirabilis
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Annus mirabilis is a Latin phrase meaning “wonderful year” or “year of wonders” (or “year of miracles”). It was used originally to refer to the year 1666, but is today also used to refer to different years with events of major importance such as 1905 when Albert Einstein published his breakthrough four articles on Physics.
1666 – Isaac Newton
In the year 1666, Isaac Newton made revolutionary inventions and discoveries in calculus, motion, optics and gravitation. As such, it has later been called Isaac Newton’s “Annus Mirabilis.” It is this year when Isaac Newton observed an apple falling from a tree, and hit upon gravitation (Newton’s apple). He was afforded the time to work on his theories due to the closure of Cambridge University by an outbreak of plague. Going to his country home, he thought about many things that, in Cambridge, he did not have the opportunity to do with such devotion.
1905 – Albert Einstein
The year 1905 has very much been linked to the term “annus mirabilis,” as Albert Einstein made important discoveries concerning the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and the special theory of relativity. These articles were published in Annalen der Physik.
— Wikipedia on Annus mirabilis
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2010.10.27 Wednesday ACHK
Noam Chomsky
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So when you go to graduate school in the natural sciences, you’re immediately brought into critical inquiry – and, in fact, what you’re learning is kind of a craft; you don’t really teach science, people sort of get the idea how to do it as apprentices, hopefully by working with good people. But the goal is to learn how to do creative work, and to challenge everything […] people have to be trained for creativity and disobedience – because there is no other way you can do science. But in the humanities and social sciences, and in fields like journalism and economics and so on […] people have to be trained to be managers, and controllers, and to accept things, and not to question too much.
* In Understanding Power, 2002
— Noam Chomsky
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2010.10.20 Wednesday ACHK
Total Perspective Vortex
The Total Perspective Vortex is allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected.
When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”
Located on Frogstar World B, the machine was originally invented by one Trin Tragula in order to annoy his wife. Because she was forever nagging him for having no sense of proportion, he decided to invent something that would show her what having a sense of proportion really meant. Unfortunately the shock of being placed in the Vortex destroyed her brain, but Trin Tragula’s grief was tempered by the knowledge that he had been right and she had been wrong. In Adams’s words, the Total Perspective Vortex illustrated that “In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”
— Wikipedia on Technology in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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2010.10.17 Sunday ACHK
Don’t Panic
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In the series, DON’T PANIC (always upper-case) is a phrase written on the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The novel explains that this was partly because the device “looked insanely complicated” to operate, and partly to keep intergalactic travelers from panicking. It is said that despite its many glaring (and occasionally fatal) inaccuracies, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy itself has outsold the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words “Don’t Panic” in large, friendly letters on the cover.
Arthur C. Clarke said Douglas Adams’ use of “don’t panic” was perhaps the best advice that could be given to humanity.
— Wikipedia on Phrases from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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2010.10.13 Wednesday ACHK
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words “DON’T PANIC” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
— Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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2010.10.12 Tuesday ACHK
Futurama 3
Godfellas
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Bender: You know, I was God once.
God: Yes, I saw. You were doing good, until everyone died.
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God: Bender, being God isn’t easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you, and if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch. Like a safecracker, or a pickpocket.
Bender: Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!
God: Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.
— Futurama
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2010.10.11 Monday ACHK
Jamie Hyneman
Early life, education, and early career
Hyneman was born in Marshall, Michigan and raised in Columbus, Indiana. Describing his early life, Hyneman said “I was a problematic kid, to be sure. I left home when I was 14 and hitchhiked all over the country.”
He earned a degree in Russian linguistics from Indiana University. A variety of careers fill his resume, including scuba diver, wilderness survival expert, boat captain, linguist, pet shop owner, animal wrangler, machinist, concrete inspector, and chef. He apparently has a mild case of acrophobia (fear of heights), as mentioned in the “Hammer Drop” episode segment of Mythbusters (This is also shown in “Duct Tape Special 2”).
— Wikipedia on Jamie Hyneman
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2010.10.07 Thursday ACHK
Magic 3
迷離境界 4
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The real world is more magical than your magical world.
— Me@2010.09.27
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My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.
— Act II
— George Bernard Shaw
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2010.10.04 Monday ACHK
Physics Town 
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