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Hey there, come on in and say "Hi."

Who Am I?

Hi. My name's JT and I'm a Music student at Missouri State University studying voice. I will be studying Music Theory in grad school. I also have strong interests in Physics and Astronomy (and pretty much any other science).

I am also a speaker and writer on the dangers of religious certainty and faith. My blog for such ramblings is Siderial Heresy. I also contribute to Teh Juggernauts blog.

I co-founded the MSU Chapter of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and led the group for a year. In 2007 I was part of the panel for the MSU Open Forum on Faith.

I am not a bird.

Profile Information

What kind of geek are you?

Music and Science

Why do you consider yourself a geek?

I love learning.

How did you find out about our Geek community?

Through a friend.

What are your "geeky equipment" specs?

One brain? Curiosity? An affinity for empiricism?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Cool.

What makes you laugh?

Almost everything.

What is the thing in life you treasure most?

Truth and knowledge.

What's the geekiest thing you've ever done?

Snuck into an Astronomy class.

What do you do to entertain yourself?

Read and make fun of religion.

Favorite music, movies, books, shows, artists, games, people, events, hobbies, etc.?

Too much to list. Ask me. :D

What's your Web site / blog address?

http://jteberhard.blogspot.com

JT Eberhard's Blog

Dubya is still a douche

The other day, still-president Bush and his administration took a break from not doing anything aside from watching the seconds tick down on their administration to ref… Continue

Posted on December 23, 2008 at 9:30pm —

Obama disappoints

Obama has selected Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.

"As we've pointed out several times before, in 2004 Warren declared that marriage, reproductive choice, and stem cell research were "non-negotiable" issues for Christian voters and has admit

… Continue

Posted on December 19, 2008 at 10:23am — 1 Comment

The Large Hadron Collider

An Astronomy student named Aron McCart recently asked me to review a research paper he was doing for a class. I loved the paper so much, I asked it I could repost it to my various blogs. Click on all images to biggify them.

Of course, it doesn't go after the jugular of faith as much as I'd like (it seems the only opposition to the LHC comes from a handful of religious scientists and a fair number of religiously-motivated layman) as a research paper shouldn't, but it'll do.… Continue

Posted on November 30, 2008 at 9:00am — 1 Comment

I have some good news and I have some bad news...

Disclaimer: When people mess with the well-being of children, it makes my blood boil. As such, even the "good news" section of this note results in a pretty strong rant. If you're faint of heart, keep reading - it'll be good for you.

Let's start with the bad: one last time, science is going to suffer at the hands of the current President before he is finally (and mercifully)… Continue

Posted on November 27, 2008 at 9:11am —

I'm not a sell-out

Really, I'm not. But you can bet your sweet ass that I just whipped out the ol' credit card and ordered one of these.

In fact, I think I'm going to order two, as I fully anticipate breaking the first one in short order.
Continue

Posted on November 25, 2008 at 9:41am —

Comment Wall (21 comments)

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At 1:00pm on December 5, 2008, Flimmer Skjerm said…: Glad you liked the versions I uploaded. And no thanks - there is not need to return the favour. I do not really have anything I need promoted, most of my work is done for paying clients and I do not write blogs regularily enough to warrant recognition. And frankly - the one thing I usually miss when I am helping others out is a simple "thank you". And since I got that from you, I can not really ask for anything more (and yes, I am very much aware of just how cheesy that sounds).

At 3:11am on December 5, 2008, Flimmer Skjerm said…: Okay - I created something somewhat different than the old glowing effect. You can check them out here:
http://i454.photobucket.com/albums/qq261/flimmer_skjerm/JTheadshot3.jpg <-- the large sized version
http://s454.photobucket.com/albums/qq261/flimmer_skjerm/?action=view&current=JTheadshot3_small.jpg <-- the small version which used the same format as Geeks thumbnails.

I can of course create glowing effects as well, but isn't it better to have something different instead?

At 5:22pm on December 4, 2008, Flimmer Skjerm said…: Haha - okay, I understand. I will create a version that can be scaled down for later use. But you did not say what you wanted me to do with the picture? Do you want to add some kind of special effects to it? Something similar to what I did on my picture with glow effects or do you have any other kind of requests?

At 3:07pm on December 4, 2008, Flimmer Skjerm said…: Yep, that photo works. Which leads me to my next questions; What do you want me to do with it and what size to want the end result to be? I guess you probably want something that can be used here in Geeks (183x183 pixels), but it always pays off to check first.

At 3:11pm on December 1, 2008, Flimmer Skjerm said…: Hi again - feel free to steal those pictures. I picked out some of my older photos. I assumed they turned in a way into public domain the second I uploaded them - which is also the reason I did not upload them in high quality.

Heh - and I can of course also edit a photo of you. It usually does not take too long - probably 15 - 20 minutes, depending on the size of the image (usually the bigger the better), the desired end quality (print quality demands a lot more work), necessary background processing (removing or highlighting shading, adjusting contrast and colour profiles among other things) - and finally: what kind of effects that has to be applied after the picture has been prepared. So sometimes a picture like that is processed in just 10 minutes - other times it may take up to 45 minutes or even more. If you for instance have a lot of fluffy hair that is supposed to blend in on another background, then that can be a rather timeconsuming operation - at least if you want to do it properly (there exists of course also tools for doing that, but I do not have those here at my computer).

Anyway - making a short story even shorter; Send me the picture and tell me what kind of effect you would like to have applied to it, and I'll see if I have time to do that. I think that should sound like a pretty fair deal, right?

At 12:48pm on November 30, 2008, Flimmer Skjerm said…: Okay - I uploaded the other picture I referred to my gallery. It is created in much of the same way, except I used the line drawn in the first version of the picture as boundary for the "rays" - which are created by using the zoom blur function in Photoshop.

At 12:25pm on November 30, 2008, Flimmer Skjerm said…: Hi - and thanks for the reply. The picture was - I almost said of course - made in photoshop. It was created more or less in the spur of the moment since I needed something for my profile here. Having said this, since I liked the end result, I created a different version of this picture which I probably should upload.

Before I continue, I should probably tell you that the base for this picture was from a press photo of me holding Paro, a therapeutic robot seal which was one of the many devices we managed to get hold of for a large conference and exhibition we held in Bergen, Norway early this year. And one of the keynote speakers were actually Wolfgang Von Rüden, the IT department leader of CERN. A fun fact for you since you had a blog about LHC; when we had some time to chat after his presentation I asked him if it was true that the reason people were not allowed in the LHC ring when it was activated was because of the immense magnetism could cause nuts and bolts to shoot out like bullets. He looked almost baffled and told me, "no - it is because of the dangers of radiation". Well, yet another myth is hereby debunked.

Okay, but back to the picture. It is created with four different layers; the original cropped image, a layer with black masking out everything but the face (I had to do it this way since we could see parts of the paw of the robot seal on my chest), and two layers containing my picture but with different layer settings (I believe one of them is using "pin light", the other ... ummm ... probably "soft light"). Oh - and then we have of course a fifth layer where the line itself is drawn along with the gradients that placed on top of the eyes. Its not really anything fancy, but it seems to work.

It was at least fun to do something different than to work with more "normal" design.

At 9:10am on November 9, 2008, Rebecca Craft said…: Did you see the person online right now that has the FSM as their profile pic?

At 4:03pm on October 30, 2008, Rebecca Craft said…: Well, that's what I get for trying to write at midnight after a twelve hour day...

At 3:44pm on October 30, 2008, Rebecca Craft said…: You're totally helping me fuel my performance tomorrow. I wanted you to know that. (You already know I'm proud of you) I've been so focused on myself lately. (I really had to be and needed to be, and you know why) But the piece involved needs a different energy, the desire to make a difference. You're providing a little inspiration. Fanning a fire that was always there, but hasn't been very active of late. Hmm... reading it again.... and this wasn't clear..... oopsy!