The Lair

So, it’s like … I have this series of numbers, right ? And like, these numbers are weirdly clumped together. Most of them are quite small (10^-2) values). Unfortunately, two or three of this series are whopping large numbers (10⁸ values). My challenge (since I don’t have a choice about accepting it) is to normalize all these values into a simple range of 0.0 to 1.0 – for purposes of comparison with other numbers.

Yeah. So, I used simple linear reduction to bring things down to scale. That results in the majority of the figures being incredibly, impossibly small.. So, lots of dots in the graph near 0 and just one or two near 1. That won’t do at all.

The obvious solutions, using log or sqrt, yielded interesting but unsatisfactory results. Using cos (I was just curious about what a cosine transform might accomplish here) yielded results which verged on the bizarre.

Ideas ? Get a few stats books from the library, maybe. Is this problem even solvable ? If the data is clumped towards the lower half, perhaps that just means I need to suck it up and deal with incredibly small numbers. Or … I could possibly omit the largish numbers as being statistically insignificant – they constitute less than 1% of the total sample size. Hmmm.

I am facing a jury audience of my peers in 45 minutes – to explain what is quite possibly the highlight of my academic career so far… I just finished a frantic rush job of the slides and I’m planning on winging it.

Isn’t careless irresponsibility and nonchalance grand ? I feel like a teenager again. Mwahahaha.

Update: I feel like I’ve been slathered in BBQ sauce and thrown into an open flame at an Atkin’s Diet conference. Or like a large, hungry carnivore’s personal chew toy. These are not particularly pleasant emotions for a post-seminar wind down.

Why is it that parents and random people always have this urge to tidy up your room, just a little bit ?. *sigh*. I’m aggrieved and (in my view, unnecessarily) stressed out because it seems that the so-called tidying up has contrived to lose a rather important piece of paper that was securely stowed away in a drawer. In.my.room.goddammit.

This, mind you, despite the fact that I had a piece of paper tucked into that folder which said “Don’t tidy this up. Please”. Exact words, people. Not only are they neat freaks, but they are also illiterate.

Sorry, I just need to vent. Not being able to go back home and figure out where they managed to tidy stuff that vital document, I’m left enumerating my options. I’ve already considered the attactive option of setting a fatal booby trap for all things I consider of value. Besides that, I’m fresh out of ideas. Anyone ? How do you stop a neat freak from descending on your stuff and running riot ?

Yes, there are piles of papers. I know which papers are in that pile, goddammit. Just fricking leave it alone. Go tidy up something else.

Shamelessly stolen from the charming daeghnao. The idea is to embolden the books that have been read, italicize the books that have been read to you (no one read books to me! Well, they might have done, but I can’t remember) or the books that you can’t remember.

Yeah, it’s a fricking long long loooooooong list. Other than the obvious look-at-me-ma-I-read-stuff! value, this list also told me that I seem to have abandoned Neil Gaiman a bit and need to read more of his work. I know Forge is a fan. Also, Ayn Rand has been on my “must-read-to-see-what-the-fuss-is-about” list for a few years now. Just as soon as I finish the Farseer trilogy.

As daeghnao did, I’m going to mark the books I really like with a * – most of them have been read more than once anyway, but some books are worth reading every decade or so, just to pick out nuances that I missed when I read it previously.

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I’m printing out the Chilean’s thesis and getting it bound and sending it onto his assessor and doing sundry other things that the university requires. So, he sends me a nicely formatted PDF from Chile this morning and I need to get it printed.

The printer I’m using supposedly does 60 pages per minute. I waited all day so I didn’t clog up the printer during daytime and then unloaded a massive 200 page hit on the printer 10 minutes ago. Walking casually upto the printer and checking, I see that it’s only done 80 pages (a staggering 8 pages per minute). Ummm.. err.

And now there’s a queue of people forming to pick up other stuff sent to the printer. So, what do I do ? Well, it’s not my name on that document, so I quietly slink back to my seat and pretend that nothing happened. Oh, and even better.. this fantastic printer has managed to absorb all the documents sent by folk into memory – so that they’re no longer shown in the printer queue. HP printers – good with memory, really bad at printing fast.

Printer ? what printer ? Lalalalalalala, I can’t hear you.

Been doing large scale data crunching for the past few days – and I’m slowly relearning how to do large scale database imports quickly, but carefully at the same time. That seems like a no-brainer – careful and quick seems to be the obvious attributes for an import job. But where the quality of data is required to be 100% error free (instead of merely adequate), it’s far more time consuming to validate than might otherwise be the case.

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as in, to choke.

Once again, Peyton Manning’s Colts implode at the playoffs. Bet everyone who was crowing about the Steelers being taught a lesson in Indianapolis feels just a lil bit stupid now.

And just in case anyone wonders (I know you don’t, but never mind), the only Australian sporting event I’m even bothering to watch is the tennis. Nothing else is watchable, unless a doomsday flick is your type of sporting entertainment.

Update: Couldn’t resist pointing out Arsenal stomping all over ‘Boro this weekend. Not enough to salvage Wenger’s season, probably – but that was a smackdown if I ever saw one.

Update 2:: Er. No. I’m not in Australia. My Eengleesh is teh suckz0rs.

Bzzzt. This ambitious submission, although having a good idea at its core, was not accepted because – instead of using all available 65 data points, you only displayed 20. Have a nice day, try again next time.

I think I’m going to transition from a mild case of depression to a full-on case of down-in-the-dumps now.

Just finished an upgrade of this blog to Wordpress 2.0

Well, the transition went far smoother than I expected – mostly because I don’t use many plugins and I was watching development for a while, with a fair idea of what to expect and what was required for a smooth upgrade. Uncovered at least one bug with WP 2 caching – which was only sorted out this morning – thanks to Mark Jaquith. Not a major show stopper, but it’s mildly disconcerting to see the query count from a minimalistic blog (yes, this one) hit 100+.

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Rome wound up on Wednesday. I didn’t catch all of it then, so I watched the repeat on yesterday. It was worth watching, definitely. I’m surprised to find that I agree with most of the dramatic license taken by the writer – except for one thing. I was waiting for the famous Et tu Brute from Caesar upon being stabbed by Brutus, but it never did transpire. The whole stabbing scene on the senate floor seemed slightly overdone to me – Caesar took about as much time to die as a tragic hero in a Bollywood movie – but all in all, it was a great mini series.

What’s due in series 2, I wonder. Mark Anthony and Cleopatra ? It certainly seems likely. Also, it seems logical that the writers will tie in the ascent of Octavian as the main theme of the second series – culminating with the suicide of Mark Antony and the now famous Cleopatra-asp death.

In other news, I’ve been re-reading the Mars trilogy – the process of colonizing and terraforming Mars to be suited for human habitation. I’m struck by how many of the innovations described seem actually possible today – in 2006. Perhaps this is why I keep returning to the series so many times – each time I read it, elements of Red Mars in particular seem eminently plausible. What with the other war working out well, perhaps we may need to relocate sooner than anyone imagines.

Heavens. I’m a bundle of cheer for a Saturday night.

2006 has rolled in and I’m still left contemplating mounds of paper left on my desk from 2005. Oh well. Nonetheless, I’m going to take some time to reflect on what was a bumper year for the dead tree merchants – most of the major series that I read got an update in the last year. And for no apparent reason (and with no discernible criteria in mind), I’m going to award marks out of 10 for each book. Because … my opinion really matters.

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