Sunday, January 30, 2005


Woohoo look he's pointing at my name!!!

Hello boss. In addition to the pot-belly, he also has a great sense of humor.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

The best years of my life spent thusly

Wake up. Hit snooze. Repeat. Break out of loop after a few cycles with some difficulty. Brush. Wash. Eat. Leave. Run after bus. Get on bus. Long bus ride to nowhere. Get off. Sneak into office. Get called to lab. Saw stuff. Drill holes. Make connectors. Make switches. Pour oil into long tubes. Get hands full of transformer oil (yummy!). Pour glycerine into long tubes. Get hands full of glycerine too (fun!). Lightly sizzle brain and gonads with rf till golden brown. Break for lunch. Return for more repetitive testing until brain shuts down. End the afternoon with a bang (big sparks, exploding inductors or resistors). Take a break. Surf web. Try to keep awake in cubicle. Knock off. Long bus ride home. Eat. Rinse, rest & repeat.

Friday, January 21, 2005

Nooooooooooooooooooo

why did I switch? Should have gone for the wireless deal with maxonline 3k instead. instead got baited by the mini's siren. sigh oh well hindsight is 20/20.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Today's memorable quote

"Since this gate has trouble faithfully implementing the identity operation, I guess one could say it has an identity crisis."

- Gerard J. Milburn, who together with Knill and Laflamme showed that universal quantum computation is possible with single photon sources, linear optical networks, photon counters, followed by postselection and feedforward [Nature 409 (2001)]

Btw I should point out this freshly compiled ebook which has been described by its author as "Quantum Computing for Dummies". EE/CS types might want to take a look, it looks like a pretty decent introduction. Even has examples in C and Java it seems (which puts me at a disadvantage since I know neither).

In the spirit of the current workshop allow me to serve up this mystery link.. The accompanying story is very nice too, worth a read in my opinion.

PS. My apologies Jiahao if I told you about that b4. Hope u enjoyed the quote at least :)

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

3rd Asia Pacific Workshop on Quantum Information Science

Inspired by Jiahao and M. Nielsen, here are some memorable "quotes", but don't quote me:

"I hope I don't fall asleep before the audience does. At the very least, we can fall asleep at the same time."

- Daniel Greenberger (of GHZ fame), as he was about to begin his lecture.


"Since I am from the Perimeter Institute, I will now talk about the isoperimetric problem."

- Karol Zyckowski


"This is the bestest protocol for quantum key distribution."

- Berge Englert, on what he refers to as the "Singapore Protocol"


And Hans Briegel's explanation of why the cluster/graph operators commute really reminds me of this gem from Anthony Zee's book:

"Yeah, it is reminiscent of what distinguishes the good theorists from the bad ones. The good ones always make an even number of sign errors, and the bad ones always make an odd number."

2 wrongs make one right.