Anomalous Space Time Piping

On superheroes pitching tents and pet memorials

2013-06-14T04:13:04Z

Let's just say it's not every day that one gets Bat Girl to help set up a tent. In the dark. With howling wind gusts.

Ok, let me backtrack as what I wrote is completely true --- and for those that have been to burner events before are likely not in the least surprised that this is so.

So where was I that had me taming a wild REI tent that desperately wanted to be a kite alongside a superhero in tights? As I related previously, GMU had (mostly) capitulated, thus resetting my Must Graduate or Die limit to Spring '14. Again, this was an enormous relief, and I could all the better tuck into dissertation writing. However, I felt a little celebration was in order. I had scored a ticket to one of the local burner events, Playa del Fuego, from an old friend, doc_quixote. I had previously decided not to go as that was valuable writing time. But, after getting the stay of execution from GMU after such a painful and protracted battle, I felt a "screw you, I'm going" coming. So I did. And I'm glad I went as it was just the tonic I needed.

As to Bat Girl helping me, see, I have a Pennsic campmate that was also going to be at PDF. She camps with Camp Justice League. Yes, that is a thing. And they did indeed don superhero attire for much of the burn. They're an awesome crew, and seeing them cavort as assorted Bat This and Bat That and Thors and Superpeople of various stripes in tights never failed to lift spirits.

In any case, there was a slight wrinkle when I arrived on site. My friend Sarah that camps with them had my tent, which was borrowed for Pennsic. Priority one was to find her so that I could secure my gear to then pitch my tent.

Except, well, I didn't know where she'd be at PDF. Even if I found Camp Justice League, there was no guarantee that she'd be there. And cell phone signal was notoriously unreliable in the area, thus frustrating conventional means of coordination.

The solution was remarkably simple: I'd play my pipes onto the site! And so within moments an excited Bat Girl had homed in on my skirling. Mission: accomplished! Apparently bagpipes make for remarkly good homing beacons in crowded, noisy outdoor venues. Who knew? Portability is admittedly a problem, though.

It was unseasonably cold, and the wind fierce. It was also dark. This naturally made setting up my tent an onerous solo endeavor. Fortunately I had superhero assistance! My Bat Girl friend gave a much needed helping hand to tame the wild, flapping thing. The tent, obviously filled with calamitous and villainous ire from its wind fueled superpower, finally succumbed to our combined might. Its apparent weakness not a stake through the heart, but many stakes hammered with merciless glee. Go, go, Team Justice League!

The most memorable event occured Sunday night during the art burn. Sunday night is traditionally when various camps at PDF submit pieces to be burned. There was a spectacular colorful spiral tower to be burned, and some sort of wedding cake looking thing, too. However, the most moving piece was dedicated to those that had lost cats, but was later expanded to include other animals. It was comprised of a gaily painted wooden frame with silhouettes of cats on each panel. Next to it was a jar of pens, and passersby were encouraged to write a little something about a pet that has passed on. When I finally got a chance to look at it, it was already covered in emotional mementos to much loved and missed pets. There were a few pictures tacked to the frame, too, of long passed furry friends.

This was the most moving art piece I had seen at a burn. Reading all the notes to well loved pets was heart rending.

I took up a pen and wrote a note to my "Ungrateful Fur Tube," Seamus, that had succumbed to cancer a few years ago. It was an emotional moment, and I was very thankful for the folks that had thoughtfully dedicated clearly much effort into such wonderful and moving art. I miss the fur kid deeply, and I had a good cathartic moment scrawling words to that effect on the wooden frame.

Sunday night it was first up to be burned, and several hundred had encircled the burn area in rapt anticipation. I joined the crowd cradling my pipes as I had played some before the burn and hadn't had time to trudge back to the tent to stow them. As a volunteer fireman clad in heavy protective gear lit the piece, a mournful song boomed across the playa. It was a Cat Lullaby. And, well, as the old Scottish expression goes, "It'd bring a tear to a glass eye."

I was standing next to one of my favorite vets, Just Joe, and he turned to me as the song ended and said, "Now would be a good time to play Amazing Grace." I replied, "Well, I hadn't coordinated with the folks for that piece, and I'd hate to impose." I'm sensitive about playing the big instrument in tandem with someone else's work without getting prior permission, and felt I'd risk stepping on toes if I struck up.

Then the meowing started.

Or, rather, meowing of Amazing Grace. About a dozen or so people to my left were tearily meowing away that tune, and Just Joe and I looked at each other ... I knew that right then, right at the moment, if there wasn't ever a time to play Amazing Grace, it'd be right then.

So, I struck in my old 1955 Hendersons ... and a huge throaty roar from the gathered washed over me as the initial note skirled free. That was a first. That, in all my years of playing, had never, ever happened. Such a wave of emotion!

I wasn't in the best of tune since the pipes had gotten cold, but I played Amazing Grace for Seamus, for all those much loved animals that were lost, for everyone. And after the last note slid away into the night, the silence that folded in afterwards was as palpable as a heavy wool blanket. It was a moment writ solid into my memory.

For that moment alone, I am so very, very glad I went to the Spring '13 Playa del Fuego.

Bureaucracy: 2, Mark: 1

2013-06-06T17:51:09Z

I've been motivated by fengi's "Comment month," whereby he will strive to comment on every single of his friends' LJ posts this month. Good idea, that. So, fengi, you can safely mark me down as a data point in your favor.

(And I like one of the comments. "Now I have this mental image of you straddling LiveJournal and pounding its sternum with both fists while yelling ``LIVE, damn you, LIVE!''")

I have a lot to share, but I'll do so piecemeal ... one entry at a time. I'm hoping that tactic increases the likelihood that I will write more here. (And that I can, in turn, harness some productive writing momentum.)

Though I'd love to first share my thoughts on the last Game of Thrones episode,

[GoT spoiler]

~~The Red Wedding~~

The Rains of Castamere, I feel that I should more-or-less address recent events in chronological order. And that means relating an update regarding the bureacratic snafu in which I've been embroiled for years, and has finally come to a head. I can now state "Bureaucracy: 2, Mark: 1" as the school has, somewhat reluctantly, ruled mostly in my favor. Mostly. I now have until Spring '14 to finish my dissertation, which is somewhat stunning as my advisor and I had scaled back our request to include just this Fall. But, I'll take it.

("Mostly" in that really the clock should have been set to Fall '15 to be on par with the standard PhD timeline. This still bothers me, but it's moot in that I fully intend on finishing this Fall, anyway.)

Of course GMU couldn't let even this final act go without further screwups. They were supposed to mail the extension letter for me to sign. It never arrived. I made two attempts to show up in person to sign same --- I had to return for a second visit because on the first attempt the person that said they'd be there was in a meeting. And, even then, I laughed aloud when I saw they had misspelled my name. I signed the damned thing anyway and asked for a photocopy, on the spot. Damn skippy that was going into my personal records.

This is an immense relief to have this behind me. Ironically, by giving me until the Spring to wrap up the degree they've likely increased the chances of me finishing this Fall since I no longer will be obsessing over this imbroglio. It is a little easier to concentrate when one doesn't have a Sword of Damocles swinging overhead.

An experiment in mind hackery

2013-04-29T23:31:05Z

So, I've been playing round with binaural beats as a productivity aid. I'm not sure if it actually helps, but I do get an interesting lingering acoustic hallucination when I listen to this for more than, say, fifteen minutes, and then turn off the audio feed. (Note, you will need to listen to that with headphones, and likely with the volume turned up a bit.) I do feel ... something ... while listening. My heart rate seems to pick up and I feel what can best be described as a little anxious. I'm not sure if my focus has improved.

Would anyone else like to give a listen and provide feedback?

R wrangling

2013-04-07T01:28:37Z

Please be warned that I'm mostly venting about R in this post. Or, rather, venting and sharing knowledge.

As one is wont to do whilst working on a dissertation, one occasionally finds the need to create spiffy plots, and that's the position I found myself in today. Today's primary objective was to create a new plot and, as is typical with R, the initial plot took about a minute to write up ... and several hours to tweak to get Just Right. Truly today was epically ambivalent in that I feel a tangible sense of accomplishment, but that I've also had to waste several hours on something that was, in a sense, trivial.

Essentially I had the following data:

> head(trainingSetCounts)
  Job Generation NumParentsHigh NumParentsLow
1   0          0             29            12
2   0          1             41            12
3   0          2             31            20
4   0          3             19            27
5   0          4             16            28
6   0          5             34             8
> tail(trainingSetCounts)
    Job Generation NumParentsHigh NumParentsLow
715   9         18             36            20
716   9         19             31            13
717   9         20             29            17
718   9         21             33            13
719   9         22             46             6
720   9         23             56             6

Without going into too much detail on the variable meanings, I wanted to create a combined box-and-whiskers plot of the "NumParentsHigh" and "NumParentsLow" by "Generation" to make side-by-side comparison easy. I knew that ggplot2 was more than capable of rendering such.

So, my first cut rendering this plot was this:

q <- ggplot(subset(trainingSetCounts, Generation %% 2 == 0), aes(factor(Generation),NumParentsHigh,color='red')) + geom_boxplot()
q + labs(y = 'Training Set Sizes', x = 'Generation', colour = 'Counts') + geom_boxplot(aes(y=NumParentsLow,color='blue'))

Which generates the following plot:

This was most of the way there and took no time to do. This does a good job of showing the relative distributions by generation of the two variables, NumParentsHigh and NumParentsLow. However, there are some obvious problems with this plot. First, the two box-and-whisker plots overlap one another, and the legend uses the color name, which isn't at all descriptive of the variable.

And so began my merry and hellish journey to the final solution.

First, I knew that ggplot2 had the capability of "dodging" elements between plot layers; i.e., pulling overlapping elements apart to overcome overlaps. I spent some time playing with various permutations of position="dodge" to no avail. I also tried a variety of other ggplot incantations. I was getting very frustrated, especially since my intuition was that there was a simple way to do this given my experience with R.

After a while I realized that ggplot2 would intelligently render the two variables if I could differentiate them in some way on a row by row basis. What I needed to do was to split each row into two: one for the NumParentsHigh and the other for NumParentsLow. So I proceeded to cobble together code to convert the dataframe to a format that contained "Job, Generation, Count, Type" where "Type" would be a factor for "high" and "low" values.

The R Way to do this would be to use something like tapply() or transform(), but those are good at applying a function for groups of variables. They weren't applicable to the job. (Or, if they were, it wasn't obvious to me.)

So I began to write a for() loop to grind through the original dataframe to convert it to the other format. Here's a hint: anytime you are writing a for() loop in R, you are very, very likely Doing It Wrong™. And so I was.

After spending an embarrassingly long time trying to coerce various rbind() calls to work correctly inside a for loop, I realized that the plyr package's melt() probably would do what I wanted. Sure enough, this is the output from such a call:

> head(melt(trainingSetCounts,id=c("Job","Generation")))
  Job Generation       variable value
1   0          0 NumParentsHigh    29
2   0          1 NumParentsHigh    41
3   0          2 NumParentsHigh    31
4   0          3 NumParentsHigh    19
5   0          4 NumParentsHigh    16
6   0          5 NumParentsHigh    34

That is, melt() pulled out the individual values for NumParentsHigh and NumParentsLow by Job and Generation and created two new variables, appropriately enough called "variable" and "value." I now had the pieces I needed to make the final plot.

p <- ggplot(subset(melted.trainingSetCounts, Generation %% 2 == 0), aes(factor(Generation),value,color=factor(variable,labels=c('Best','Worst')))) 
p + labs(y = 'Training Set Sizes', x = 'Generation', colour = 'Counts') + geom_boxplot()

Which renders the following plot:

Finally the two sets of box-and-whisker plots no longer overlap and the legend labels are sensible. And, along the way I learned a little more about melt() and ggplot2.

My tweets

2013-01-25T17:00:09Z

Thu, 15:13: RT @neiltyson: In 5-billion yrs the Sun will expand & engulf our orbit as the charred ember that was once Earth vaporizes. Have a ni ...
Thu, 15:31: $800 for bereavement travel? No thanks #delta. That costs more than flying to Europe. Time to call their competition.
Thu, 15:44: And that's $950 via United for bereavement. Apparently there'll be an additional memorial service for my wallet.
Thu, 23:38: RT @axb21: I can always blow my own mind by remembering that what we experience as cold is the atoms and molecules in the air moving slower.
Fri, 06:51: Great. Airport parking bus gets into fender bender. Nice start to trip.
Fri, 06:56: RT @kdrum: Republicans Might Be Outsmarting Themselves on the Electoral College http://t.co/zRgquZ7y

My tweets

2013-01-24T17:00:09Z

Wed, 21:37: RT @bonniegrrl: "Yay! Celery for dinner!" - said no one ever
Thu, 00:39: RT @jodiecongirl: What should really be taught in personal finance courses... http://t.co/yZu8YV8p
Thu, 00:45: RT @isaiah_saxon_: super visual, 80's sci-fi magazine, OMNI, is online in its entirety: http://t.co/17rD14TT thanks to @internetarchive ...
Thu, 00:58: RT @owillis: wait, what? people who get health care early dont have to GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM WHEN IT BECOMES A CRISIS? http://t.co/dR ...
Thu, 01:01: RT @StephenAtHome: I believe Ayn Rand's first love poem went: Roses are red/ violets are blue/ finish this poem yourself / you dependent ...

My tweets

2013-01-23T17:00:02Z

Wed, 11:37: RT @petersagal: Business idea: dog brothels. You pay a dog to be pretend to be happy to see you when you come “home.”
Wed, 11:44: RT @radleybalko: New from Arizona's nutty legislature: student loyalty oaths. http://t.co/mspdEg4c

My tweets

2013-01-22T17:00:03Z

Mon, 13:37: RT @TheBloggess: "Hang on a sec...I've gotta send this invisible text." http://t.co/FvzmHgy5
Mon, 13:41: RT @axb21: The US can't cease to be something it never was. It can't return to high ground it never visited. It can't find a lost path i ...

My tweets

2013-01-21T17:00:11Z

Mon, 11:09: RT @slashdot: Edward Tufte's Defense of Aaron Swartz and the "Marvelously Different" http://t.co/lG6WEZcb
Mon, 11:19: RT @wstrinz: Surprisingly, someone has something to say about HFR LOTR that isn't completely trivial, and his name is @DrMathochist http ...
Mon, 11:31: RT @zerohedge: Presenting The 50 Point S&P 500 Move Courtesy Of The Illegal "Geithner Leak" http://t.co/0hxvsC4F

My tweets

2013-01-20T17:00:02Z

Sat, 19:55: RT @digby56: American justice: Pregnant and hog-tied http://t.co/F5LclpkZ

My tweets

2013-01-18T17:00:13Z

Thu, 13:24: Photo of Mt. Vesuvius from Space Is Gorgeous, Terrifying http://t.co/mXHFbJwH via @BadAstronomer
Thu, 18:05: Change US tax law from citizenship based law to residence based law. http://t.co/qhDSMi6E

My tweets

2013-01-17T17:00:02Z

Wed, 16:47: Fire Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann. http://t.co/QvBScC8k

My tweets

2013-01-15T17:00:04Z

Mon, 16:36: Ya know one of those $1.50 microwavable soup meals? A good toot or two of #sriracha sauce bumps that right up. #yum
Mon, 16:37: RT @pollyfrost: There's this thing called Super Bowl and if you make a salad in it, the salad never wilts. It stays fresh forever.
Mon, 16:40: RT @maksim2042: Want to learn AI? Here's a super-simple library in Python that replicates exercises in the classic AI: A Modern Apprach ...
Mon, 16:49: RT @renjender: Newest piece is up at XOJane about the Occupy Boston sex offender proposal and "radical" attitudes to rape. http://t.co/S ...
Mon, 16:52: RT @utterben: Just saw a photographer slip over in the snow. Must have had his white balance set incorrectly.
Mon, 16:53: RT @BadJokeCat: I've just started a band called 999 Megabytes. We haven't done a gig yet.
Mon, 16:56: RT @BoingBoing: Beauty of overwrought repair http://t.co/qQxsb7Wr
Mon, 17:01: RT @BoingBoing: A disc of wooden cow http://t.co/aVppZ5hY
Mon, 17:03: A little late there, #doj. #asshat http://t.co/RvHJzF3T
Mon, 17:33: Today's news of the weird: http://t.co/8a9UA7Xe Man throws puppy at Hell's Angels and escapes on bulldozer.

My tweets

2013-01-14T17:00:13Z

Sun, 18:14: Open browser tabs update, 1/13/2013… http://t.co/om7ko7iT

Open browser tabs update, 1/13/2013

2013-01-13T23:14:38Z

Updated during breaks while working on finishing a rough draft of the GeoMason Cookbook. Today's objective is to put the draft to bed, and then formally release GeoMason version 1.5; then I can (hopefully) clear GeoMason related tasks from my headspace, at least until the Summer MASON workshop. Apparently I've been shanghaied to participate in that, though I'm not sure to what degree or kind.

The AspireAssist™ Aspiration Therapy System. What's funny is that I was just joking about this concept with my ex-labmate (the now Dr. Bassett) last week, which makes for some disturbing synchronicity. I sincerely hope that this is some crude Onion-worthy internet joke. If not, this is further commentary on the continued decline of civilization. Or something.
Infusion of pseudo-poo cures gut infections in two women. Continuing along the same vein, this details repopulating GI tracts with an artificial cocktail of friendly, and necessary, bacteria. This concoction is supposed to be safer and, just as importantly, with less of an "ick" factor.
No magic show: Real-world levitation to inspire better pharmaceuticals. Making some pharmaceuticals is foiled by contact with vessel walls. The solution? (No pun intended.) Mix them without using a vessel. How do you do that? By using acoustic levitation, of course.

My tweets

2013-01-13T17:00:09Z

Sat, 14:45: RT @timoreilly: Also, must-read @lessig's angry post: Prosecutor as Bully http://t.co/jSgrR52U Be sure to read the fourth paragraph from ...
Sat, 14:51: RT @dangillmor: To understand what an abuse of authority the charges against Aaron Swartz were, see @declanm's G+ summary http://t.co/CC ...
Sat, 15:03: RT @digby56: "I'm not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I'm going to start killing people." http://t.co/Byg77uay
Sat, 23:35: RT @markfollman: 'Beijing residents online described the air as “post apocalyptic,” “terrifying” and “beyond belief."' http://t.co/3XJVpBr6

My tweets

2013-01-11T17:00:20Z

Thu, 12:59: RT @marnanel: A box of condoms here says, "Experience the next generation in condoms!" I thought the point was to avoid experiencing the ...
Thu, 13:06: RT @LabSpaces: Newly found 'volume control' in the brain promotes learning, memory - http://t.co/FbHlkrrg
Thu, 13:24: RT @timoreilly: Should broadband be treated as a basic utility in the US, like electricity, water, and traditional telephone service? ht ...
Thu, 17:07: RT @MotherJones: The science of why comment trolls suck: http://t.co/YxU1gQsd

My tweets

2013-01-10T17:00:21Z

Wed, 17:36: Feminism, Brownies, and You. http://t.co/wC2JOuIC
Wed, 17:52: RT @BoingBoing: Best New York Times wedding "corrections" ever http://t.co/83FbjPFm
Wed, 18:26: Fly Around the World for Under $200 http://t.co/JZFEdmcU (By gaming frequent flyer system.)
Wed, 18:31: RT @eevee: http://t.co/4m82j1Fm ok, nerds, there you go: r�sum�s and file extensions. #blog
Wed, 18:32: RT @eevee: →@rone i'm highly suspicious of working anywhere with a technically inept HR dept. they're the face of your damn company.
Wed, 18:40: RT @arensb: My goal for today is to be counter-unproductive.
Wed, 18:40: RT @mrdankelly: You don't sound intelligent when you belittle someone for not reading enough. You sound intelligent when you suggest a g ...
Wed, 18:42: RT @Yahoo: A brutal heat wave in Australia forces meteorologists to add new colors to the weather map: http://t.co/FNp0aWTn Forecast off ...
Wed, 21:39: RT @rubyprogrammer: This guy has done more compatibility testing for a joke than most people do for real life. http://t.co/lGpIxv53

My tweets

2013-01-09T17:00:12Z

Tue, 19:04: RT @BuzzFeedAndrew: Just a cat in a bubble bath. http://t.co/pyaDBOKi
Tue, 19:10: RT @NASA: Astronomers using @NASASpitzer & @ESAHerschel data have possibly discovered a large asteroid belt around the star Vega! ht ...

Daily open browser tabs update

2013-01-09T06:13:28Z

Yes, I know. This is becoming a habit; but it's forcing me to read and clear my ever growing browser tabs. Better yet, by actually writing a summary I all the better bind the content to memory. That is, I'm sure I'm not the only one that took copious class notes, once upon a time, and then rarely, if ever, reviewed them. However, the mere act of writing those notes helped make persistent newly acquired knowledge. I suspect it's the same process afoot here.

And so:

ARPANET Test April 1976 with Jim Henson, Ayn Rand, Sidney Nolan & Yoko Ono. Four celebrities participated in a test of ARPANET, which is, of course, the predecessor for the modern internet. They were doing something we take for granted today: communicating over distance via a computer network. As you might imagine the dialogue was interesting, if at the very least for its historical significance, but also for the interaction.

Ayn Rand comes off as a bit of a cold, calculating harridan, which at one point elicits a bit of humorous ribbing from Jim Henson:
JIM HENSON
I think Ms. Rand and my character Oscar the Grouch would have a lot to talk about actually. I am laughing out loud at this idea.
I don't think I'll quite think of Ayn Rand the same way again.

This was just Vol. 4 of a series, and given this example I think the others may merit review. (Which likely means more browser tabs to languish open. *sigh*)

UPDATE: All those ARPANET "test" dialogues were apparently "art" and therefore not real. Sorry for the misinformation, though I'm somewhat relieved that I wasn't the only one taken in, and by folks I consider savvier than me. (_blackjack_, do so note as I believe I originally got it from you.)
I Raised My Kids On the Command Line…and They Love It. This is really more relating the transition from command line to a GUI, albeit from the perspective of a three year old and then the same at five years of age. This was an oddly moving piece. I see from some of the comments that I wasn't the only one that felt that way.
I helped him them in as root for the very first time. (Jacob typed "root", and I typed the password, and provided the explanation for why we were telling the computer we were "root".) Jacob and Oliver alternated typing bits of some apt-get command lines. Then while we waited for software to download, I had to answer repeated questions of "how soon will the mouse work?" and "what does ‘install' mean?"

Finally it was there, and I told Jacob to type startx. I intentionally did not install a display manager; more on that later. He pressed Enter, the screen went blank for about 5 seconds, and then X appeared. "Excited" can't begin to describe how they acted. They took turns playing with the mouse. They loved how the trash can icon (I started with XFCE) showed trash IN the trash can.
It's hard to imagine a young lad in the days of iPads and PS3s getting so hyped over X11 and a mouse, but I'm enamored of the idea. Way to go uber geek dad!

Still 17 open tabs. Oy. I'd read more, but I need to forge ahead on work.

Small pipes workshop

2013-01-09T01:31:30Z

It's looking good for me to go to an upcoming small pipes workshop in West Virginia on the weekend of the 18th. Though the only small pipes I have are shuttles, I think they're a hoot. Very fun to play, and just mellow enough for parties. (Sometimes they're too mellow if the party is loud enough.)

However, should I go to this workshop I intend on renting a set of bellows-blown Scottish smallpipes. I've been "bellows curious" for some time, and am looking forward to giving them a go. My only fear is that I'll like them so much that I'll want a set, and that'll be yet another thing to add to the List of Stuff to Buy After Graduating.

I'm particularly keen to expand my repertoire ... but especially eager to improve my learning by ear. It's a skill that I've long wanted to cultivate, and the workshop will be a perfect opportunity to do so. Indeed, many of the classes are taught by ear!

grim_piper, you should consider going! I think you'd have a ball!

Open browser tabs update

2013-01-08T00:52:40Z

Clearing out more open browser tabs.

FocusAtWill is a sort of Pandora for productivity. You can select from one of several different kinds of music streams such as ambient, jazz, and classical. The tunes are allegedly played in an order for optimal productivity. It all seems to be a bit woo to me, but confess I've not looked into it in any detail. However, I've been enjoying their ambient stream while working, so that's something.
Heard The One About The Totalitarian Icelandic Government Refusing A Girl Her Name? Fox News is apparently apoplectic over that Evil Socialist Icelandic Gummit telling parents how to name their children. Except, naturally, the reality is significantly different than they portray and, in this case, also more interesting. Rei, a native Icelander, provides a very interesting background not only on Icelandic names, but on the language itself.

The comments are worth a skim, too. For example, I encountered this gem:
Most Icelandic guys names are really "tough". Norse gods are of course popular, but it's common also to see a person with a name which has a meaning like "Victorious GodBear SonOfAGlacier" or whatnot
Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong. Complex simulations of real-world phenomena generally have a lot of parameters. Part of the simulation calibration is to tweak those settings to minimize the difference from real world observation. Except more than one set of simulation settings can give similar fits, but yield entirely different predictions. I'd wager, too, that these simulations have a stochastic element, which means that even with the same parameters it may be possible to get wildly different outcomes from run to run. And we need not even bring up overfitting.
The 10 Most Corrupt Tax Loopholes. This has clearly been languishing for a while as an open tab on my browser -- it dates from before the election. Nonetheless, it enumerates ten tax loopholes, many of which I didn't know about. I'm a little skeptical of some of the numbers and claims, but haven't had a chance to dig deeper. (As witnessed by how long it's been setting as an open tab. Heh.) In any case, the last item could hardly be called a tax loophole. Getting a state or municipality to pay you to move facilities, or a sports team, isn't tax related. You may not like the outcome, but I don't see where a tax loophole is involved.

Down to 18 open tabs, so that's progress. Mind, one is for e-mail, the other for my calendar, a couple R related pages that no one else is likely interested in, and a few other tabs house work related items. Still, it's nice to simplify, even if it's just a few items.

Multiple browser tab dump

2013-01-07T05:04:25Z

My friend thewronghands, has a great idea, which I've decided to emulate here. Apparently, like her, I tend to have monotonically increasing open browser tabs, tabs that are open to things "I'll get to in just a minute." Except the minute doesn't happen, and next thing I know I have over 20 open tabs. Her solution? Block out time to read several, and then summarize and share those links.

Just so.

Marriage equality's biggest foe sees she can't fight the new family values: a lengthy piece focused on one Mary Gallagher who is a gay-marriage opponent, and her concluding that the times are turning against her. The essay shares some of her, and her organization's, salient points and refutes them; e.g., that gay marriage increases divorce rates. The author also shares some of the contradictions inherent in Ms. Gallagher's life, such as her espousing more tradition marriage while seemingly eschewing some of the same trappings, and engages in speculation regarding her current stance as manifesting from her college single motherhood experience.
Occupy Steubenville: Anonymous vs. the Sheriff: the sheriff of the infamous Steubenville has put Anonymous on notice that he's coming after them for their document dump regarding the teenage girl rape case. Good luck with that.
"Twine is a wireless sensor block tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The durable, rubbery block has WiFi, on-board temperature and orientation sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors. Power is supplied by micro USB or two AAA batteries (and Twine will email you when you need to change the batteries)."

Very cool. Too bad about the price, though.
Online random number generator that uses atmospheric noise.

Alas, I still have 22 tabs open; but at least this is a start.

Well, that's that.

2013-01-03T22:29:01Z

I've just temporarily disabled my Facebook account. It was oddly liberating.

I suppose this means I'll be posting here more frequently. I hope so. I've missed LJ. I've missed the days when missing a few hours risked skipping over whole swathes of interesting prose. Maybe I'm just lucky in that my LJ "friends" were particularly good writers, but it seemed each entry teemed with interesting wit.

That's still true today, it's just that the frequency and length of the friends feed is but a muddy trickle of the torrent of yore.

mcoletti @ 2012-11-24T21:37:00

2012-11-25T02:37:36Z

I sent this e-mail to the band mailing list nearly a week ago:

Just an FYI, but I will not be at the Christmas Walk as I'll be at a memorial service, instead; believe me, I'd much, much rather be in Alexandria.

Also, some of you already know this, but I'll share this here to bring the rest of the crew up to speed: I am taking a leave of absence, effective immediately, from the band. I have a lot of writing to do over the next several months and scant little time to do it all. To that end, I'm ramping down extracurricular activities to yield more time for dissertation wrangling. To further convey the gravitas of my situation, I'm even resigning from my job in January to free up time -- and valuable head space. (Frankly the overhead to constantly context switch from one task to another was -- and is -- killing my productivity.)

Mind, I will still be able to in a very limited way participate with the band. I can probably do parades and the occasional band job. E.g., I know we're generally short handed for the AU gigs, so you can probably count on me for helping out with those. I also have the band music, so I'll be keeping that fresh on my fingers; there are ample practice spots on campus, so I'll be able to keep my pipes going. And, iff the band really needs backup for a competition, say, to prevent a disqualification scenario due to insufficient numbers, then you could probably convince me to do that one competition.

It pains me to make the decision, it really does; especially given the lower numbers in our ranks, and Dan's specific plea to recruit more players. Unfortunately, when it comes down to the wire school will always take priority. But that band remains my delightfully dysfunctional and fun family. I'll miss the times, both good and bad, spent with you guys.

It was a surprisingly easy decision to make, in a way. It's almost akin to applying Amdahl's Law to my life. Just as one derives the most benefit from optimizing the most time consuming parts of a program first, if I need to free up time for working on my dissertation then the obvious heuristic would be to cut out the extracurricular activities that consume the most time. Sadly, that's the band. Easily.

But, the band is more than a mere extracurricular activity. It's an integral part of my life. In a way, the band is family. I know, it sounds trite, but it's nonetheless true. Fortunately I haven't completely severed ties. As mentioned in my e-mail, I'll still participate in parades and one off performances. For one thing, we're always short handed for American University graduation gigs, and those are big money makers for the band; so, I'm all too happy to lend a hand for those.