Monday, November 23rd, 2009
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4:12 PM - Titillating Dreams, or Aters will be Aters
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I've been dreaming original songs lately. The one last night was performed by T. Lil' Ater or possibly T. Lil' 'ater.
I guess the 'T' stands for 'Tit'. I'm not sure why they didn't go for T. Lil' 8'er myself, but that is why I'm not in charge.
current music: Magenta - Seven
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(Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
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9:21 PM - Dentate Gyrus is not the same thing as Vagina Dentata
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Every time 'Dentate Gyrus' comes up in physio psych class I start giggling as it makes me think of 'Vagina Dentata' or worse 'Vagina Dentata Gyrating'.
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(Give your own rant)
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7:17 PM - Just one flaw...
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The first text editor I used when I started using Win 3.1 on a 286 way back when was... Clipboard.
It was a great text editor. I liked it much more than the text based editor I had used on the Commodore 64. It had one quirk though. Sometimes when I switched to another application and then switched back all my text was mysteriously changed to some short bit of text. I just had to make sure that I saved my text before switching to another app and just reloaded it if it had changed. Other than that, it was great!
current music: iQ - Frequency
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(Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, November 15th, 2009
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7:03 PM - Scale Errors
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One of my favourite bits from the psych class is an odd thing that happens with two-year-olds.
The toddlers are in a room with large toys that they can climb into like a plastic car. They leave the room and when they come back smaller versions of the same toys are there. They recognize the toys and they recognize their size, but somehow they can't quite merge those two things together. They can't figure out why they can't fit into the smaller car. The explanation is that object identification is done with the ventral stream of the visual system and the dorsal stream recognizes the size, but these streams are not communicating properly yet.
current music: Oceansize - Frames Live
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(1 counter-rant | Give your own rant)
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12:11 PM - How Information Systems Analogous to the Mind Works
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I'm almost half way through How the Mind Works and I've pretty much lost interest. It's not jibing with me.
I guess it's the "Computational Theory of the Mind". I'm not sure why functional equivalence with respect to information tells us anything. That doesn't seem particularly important. So for me Turing Machines and Chinese Rooms seem kinda silly and irrelevant.
Right now I'm taking a course on physiological psychology. That course is on how the nervous system and the brain affect our psychology. Now that seems significant. You know, biology and psychology rather than mathematical informational systems.
Meh.
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Friday, November 13th, 2009
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7:34 PM
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009
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6:56 PM - Whoa, the 80s
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"To the heroism of the Resistance Fighters--past, present, and future--this work is respectfully dedicated"
- Opening dedication to the 1983 V miniseries Wait, what?
I guess I haven't watched 80s stuff in a while, so I'm a little startled watching the old miniseries. I'm only a half hour in and I'm constantly saying stuff like "What? You're kidding? [After someone reassuredly says 'Ah they say they come in peace'] Is he being sarcastic? Oh wait, he's not. [After 'Unbelievable'] You are correct sir. Really? Oh come on."
After the pro-terrorism dedication, it opens with a helicopter attack on some paramilitary unit. People are thrown somehow by the bullets coming from the helicopters but they are otherwise uninjured. One person dies, so the leader stands his ground with the helicopter missing all its shots, he shoots the pilot, and the helicopter flies up, to its right, and just out of shot and then an explosion happens somewhere nearby but clearly not where the helicopter is. Someone says "unbelievable" in all seriousness. Soon after that a helicopter attempts to shoot the people in a car by flying down in front of it so the car has so turn to not ram it and the helicopter still misses most of its shots.
I shouldn't have watched this right after Generation Kill.
Okay that was the first four minutes. Later, there is the girl who says she doesn't want to die a virgin and just about every cliche out there is used. People are acting a second too early and otherwise seem to be directed rather than reacting.
Ah the 80s. How I don't miss you.
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(8 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
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12:36 PM - Dexter
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I keep thinking that while I really enjoy the TV show Dexter, I prefer the first season. In that season there something not quite human about him. In particular, he seemed completely asexual. In later seasons, he just seems like a normal guy most of the time with an unfortunate hobby. We can mostly identify with him now.
Then I worry that I might be alone in thinking this.
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(3 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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10:55 AM - Econ Models
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Okay, so all these long-term and short-term economic models I'm learning are fine for junior undergrad classes, but when are we going to get to the time-dependent models with exogenous price and wage resistance coefficients? Price is neither market-clearing nor sticky, well except for when t→∞ and t→0 respectively.
current music: Oceansize - Frames
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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9:32 PM - Oh come on, not every article has to be about the Health Care debate
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10:03 AM - Goddess of Love
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This is going to bug me until I figure it out.
I was listening to Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music - The Platinum Collection last night and while listening to Goddess of Love, I realized that I know the chorus (~ 1:00-1:21) from somewhere else. The keyboards and harp bit in particular.
I thought U2, Marillion, or somebody covered it, but the only cover I can find is by co-writer Dave Stewart and that doesn't have the bits that sound familiar. Google doesn't seem to find really find anything about the song past the lyrics and reviews that are cut-and-pastes of the same line. I couldn't find mentions of someone stealing the chorus, sampling it, or putting it in some movie. I'm pretty sure I never watched Vanna White same named movie, so that's not it if the song is in that.
Update: It might be reminding me of You're Gone by Marillion.
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(Give your own rant)
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| Saturday, October 31st, 2009
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9:33 PM
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Ever write an entry re-living past opinions and then after the Nth time rereading it you suddenly find yourself saying "What the hell?! I don't believe any of this crap. It's trivially wrong." and click delete?
I've been doing this a lot lately. If I start to reread entries from years ago, I'm pretty sure I'll delete this whole blog.
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(3 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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4:30 PM - Minors and Thesis
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Today had a bit of running around to do some administrative stuff. It now looks like I'll add on a psychology minor and an economics minor to my honours philosophy degree when I graduate next term. That'll make it easier when people ask me my major. "Well, officially it's philosophy, but I have a physics degree and right now I'm actually just taking economics and psychology courses to kill time until the recession is over" can be shortened to "Physics and philosophy with economics and psychology minors".
The undergrad adviser convinced me to finish my thesis. It'll be ten years late and my supervisor has already retired. I don't need to finish it to get the degree, but right now I have two F- grades because of it and both courses will turn to whatever I get on the paper. This is if I can find my pre-draft. I think I have a thesis binder at my parents' place. Wish me good luck finding an electronic version. Oh ya, this is also if I can remember anything about mediaeval dialectical logic. Oh man, and it is if I can find a new adviser who know anything thing about mediaeval logic (i.e., down to maybe one guy) and has time to supervise (i.e., not sure). Otherwise, I need a new topic and a new adviser.
current music: Agents of Mercy - The Fading Ghosts of Twilight
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(Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, October 25th, 2009
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3:34 PM - Bits from Steven Pinker's Playboy Forum 1-page article
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Every era has a conception of who we are. In classical time it was the doctrine of Political Man, which defined humans in terms of their place in the social order. In the Christian Middle Ages we had Religious Man, defined by his relationship with God. The Enlightenment brought us Economic Man, who organized his life around the rational pursuit of self-interest. And then... the 20th century brought us Psychological Man--Sigmund Freud's conception of a complex psyche balancing its instinctual origins with the demands of civilization....
Advances in cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary biology and genetics are being brought into psychology and are illuminating human nature in breathtaking ways....
Political ideologies... are partly heritable... and they embrace different conceptions of what counts as moral (fairness to individuals, for liberals, verses loyalty to a community, for conservatives). Religion emerges from a brain predisposed to see disembodied spirits everywhere and to ask "why" questions of everything in sight. Economic behavior--and, we now see, misbehavior--is shaped by cognitive illusions about risk, loss and probability. Also under the microscope are beauty, sexuality, reasoning, language, social relationships, violence and other human obsessions....
Our policies in education, economics and conflict resolution, in particular, can only benefit from a more realistic understanding of what makes people tick....
The new conception of humans' place in nature will also deliver shocks to our sense of the ultimate purpose and value of life.... (From Playboy October 2009) Okay, How The Mind Works just jumped up near the top of my reading queue. I think that article nicely summarizes where my thinking is right now.
current music: Satellite - Nostalgia
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(9 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Friday, October 23rd, 2009
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11:09 PM - C is for Food
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Some university rankings are in. Waterloo is tops in most categories, but got a C in food services.
This reminds me of something back in my days in residence. People were bitching about the price of the food and quality of the service and wanted to organize to do something about it. One guy non-ironically said that "the school was looking into it" and they might get another student on some committee panel, so things are looking up. I blinked. He also added that the one positive thing he could say is that every year the company behind food services donates millions of dollars to the University.
"Oh, there is the problem." I said. "Forget that committee thing and have everyone try to get a rule past that food services is not allowed to give kickbacks to the University. Problem solved."
No one liked that idea. It just got me strange looks. That guy told me that he didn't mind subsidizing the school when he bought food, even though he was bitching about the prices a few minutes earlier. I added that not allowing kickbacks would make the University more open to switching to a different company. "What?", he said startled, "Wait, I never said I wanted another company in here. I just want better service." I couldn't figure out how he expected that to happen with food services subsidizing the school and having no threat of being replaced, so I just had a strange look on my face.
That was over ten years ago and nothing has improved. Well, there are more Tim Horton's on campus. I guess the moral of the story is go after the conflicts of interest if you want things to actually change.
Oh ya, I also wanted to get rid of the mandatory meal plan with living in residence. The rent for living in residence is reasonable, but I ate hundreds of dollars less than the minimum amount required for the meal plan, so I never went into residence again just because of that. People gave me strange looks when I wanted to get rid of that minimum. I clearly wasn't going to fit in with whatever they were trying to organized, so I cut out.
current music: OSI - Blood
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12:12 PM - Battlestar Galactica The Plan
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| Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
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10:43 PM
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We were doing jujitsu at karate tonight and doing obi kumite. That's where you wrestle from your knees and have to take off their belt and tie it on another part of their body (that's not their neck). Or you can submit them. Most times you go for the belt for a while to distract them and then sneak in a submission.
I was feeling a bit cocky going against these underfed white to orange belts. I was immediately on the back of one orange belt with a choke, but it was too quick, so I just hung out back there. He tried to reach behind him to untie my belt, so I just came in little closer and that submitted him. So when a large white belt challenged me, I was expecting an easy win. Oh my. I talked to him later and he is 300 pounds and has a brown belt in another style. Ah.
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(7 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, October 18th, 2009
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11:09 PM - Yoga Audio Prototype
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I recorded the rough audio for the first 23 minutes for my yoga project with a breathing count of 10 in and 10 out. I could keep the long breath going most of the time. I did hallucinate a lot of coloured spots in front of me though.
Speaking of yoga, the yoga club is going to see Enlighten Up! tomorrow at the princess theater.
I was looking to see what I do for the guided meditation at the end and I finally almost found my favourite guided meditation. It's almost this, well that's the guided meditation, but they replaced the metronome with flutes. The metronome was the part I liked. Shrug.
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(Give your own rant)
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5:57 PM - Renzoku kumite bo kata
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Today we learned an unnamed renzoku bo kata. It can be used in renzoku kumite with one person starting at move 1 and the other starting at move 8.
( Read more... )
I think that's it. There might be more shuffling involved. I didn't actually get to do it as a renzoku kumite.
current music: Oceansize
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(Give your own rant)
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12:48 PM - Links to the Ladies of Glee
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| Saturday, October 17th, 2009
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1:03 PM - Hero Demos
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I tried out the demo for Band Hero and thought it was odd that it had the same song on it as the demo of Guitar Hero Smash Hits. Oh wait, "Paralyzer" by local band Finger Eleven is not the same song as "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand? Oh. Really? Someone must have gotten sued over that, right?
current music: Blind Ego - Numb
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(Give your own rant)
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| Friday, October 16th, 2009
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4:14 PM - Yoga and Kata Yoga
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I haven't been to yoga much this term. The new schedule doesn't really work for me. I guess it is time to get to my yoga mp3 project for my solo practice.
The main idea is to record my breath to practice along with. I might eventually replace that with properly timed ocean waves though. The thing I'm playing with right now is the count. Google hasn't been any help on what the breath count should be. When I tried what I thought it should be, I got 10 seconds in and 10 seconds out. Just doing that for a minute started to put me into a slight meditative state. I timed the count in Alan Finger's DVDs and it's 5 seconds in and 5 out. Today is the first time I've noticed the instructor in class mention the timing. It's 4 seconds in and 4 out here. Ah, that's why it always seemed a bit rushed. I asked her about it and she said 4 is normal, but it is different everywhere and she went to one place that was 8 both in and out and that was nuts.
Once I get that decided, I'll finish the script to do the instructional voice over. The long breath timing has the problem that I can do half as much. In particular, I want to do a long meditation in corpse pose where I'm at least doing yoga nidra and probably a guided meditation as well. I'll drop the breathing track then and add in this metronome beep from a Stuart Wilde tape I have.
That made me think of another idea. It's an idea, but I don't know if it is a good idea or not. What I'll do is karate kata, but at the 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out count. Since most moves are full breaths, this will be extending almost every single move to be 10 seconds long. 5 seconds contracting and 5 seconds expanding. For example, a low block with the left hand will involve 5 seconds to move the left hand towards the right shoulder and another 5 seconds to bring it down for the block. Sanchin and Tensho are breathing katas, and so they won't change much except that there won't be any short breaths in there. My rough estimates suggest that going through the main katas will take a little over an hour this way. I could make a mp3 file doing a voice over with the moves, but I'm not sure why someone would want to do this.
current music: Beardfish - Destined Solitaire
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(Give your own rant)
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| Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
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10:53 PM - Mad Men
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I've recently started watching and caught up on Mad Men. I liked the first season, but I don't know if I like the other seasons or not.
I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's Don. I don't get him. There is something missing in his soul. I don't see any motivation in him. He certainly doesn't care how his actions affect others, but he doesn't seem to care how his actions affect himself either. I can't even say that he is selfish. He just does stuff with no intention behind it. He's clever, but there is nothing to him that I can relate to.
The first season was a little different as it focused on the things that we now think of as blatantly immoral, but back then was accepted behaviour. It reminded me of lighter comedies like The Brady Bunch movie and That 70s Show, but the humour here is much darker. Here we get pregnant women smoking and drinking, kids playing with dry cleaner bags on their heads, drinking and driving, no seatbelts, and people eating cream and butter to help their heart's health. It could get very dark like in the second season with whatever Don did with his hand at the restaurant with Jimmy's wife or people tackling secretaries to see what colour their panties are.
The worst unethical behaviour has to be the psychiatrist though. Not only did he do nothing to help Betty, he went behind her back and told Don all about what she said. He even went so far to tell Don that with Betty they were basically dealing with a child. When that happened, I exclaimed outloud "WHAT?!?" To me that was the defining moment in the show in how women are treated in a condensing manor--even more so than how the women in the office are treated. She was in a serious depression due to her mother dying and a withholding husband, yet her condition was shrugged away as her being childish. The problems in her life are not real. She should just grow up and get over it.
She gave up an interesting life as a model to get married and to live happily ever after and found that she was miserable. She doesn't even know if Don loves her. He is emotionally empty to her and she doesn't know the most basic things about his past. There are things she is tempted to do to bring some excitement in her life and she skirts around it, but she is unwilling to actually go through with it. That's completely different from Don who has no superego.
I like Betty and a few other characters, but I'm not particularly into the show.
current music: Roxy Music - Platinum collection disc 1
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(Give your own rant)
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11:08 AM - 2nd Year Econ
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Second year macroeconomics so far is pretty much the same as first year. They are both broad survey style courses using a book by Mankiw (this time it's this one chapters 1-6, 9-13). The instructor is using the instructor slides for the book, occasionally translating it to the Canadian economy and adding a bit more detail. It has been mostly review, but we'll get into the IS/LM model soon.
Microeconomics is quite different from first year. There isn't an assigned textbook. Instead, we are going over a few problems in detail getting a few pages of theory and the tests are related to the examples but not too similar. The first third of the course had to do with a consumer model using such things as MRS and the Slutsky and Hicks methods with Cobb-Douglas. Basically we are doing lots of graphing. We're about to switch to looking at Firms.
Although there isn't a textbook, there is an optional workbook. I also picked up the associated textbook of the workbook and it really is what we're doing (chapters 2-8,18-25,27-30), so I'm not sure why that's not our text. He pointed out that we might instead use the free PDF textbook by McAfee (also at lulu), so I guess it's the cost. The other sections are using Perloff (with or without calculus) and Fireside, but I haven't checked those ones out.
I'm also taking Intro to Mathematical Economics (text) since it is required for econometrics, but it's review from high school and first year math, so that was silly of me.
current music: Muth Math - Muth Math
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(Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
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6:57 PM - Fun with Google Auto-Complete
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i like to think... of jesus as a mischievous badger
i like to... tape my thumbs to my hands to see what it would be like to be a dinosaur
why does my vag... smell/itch/hurt/burn/smell like fish/fart/leak/stink/discharge
i smell like.. onions/ammonia/cheese
what are these... strawberries doing on my nipples i need them for the fruit salad
what are these bumps on my... nipples/face/arms/balls/head/forehead/hands/tongue
why is my mom so... cheap
why does steve... ballmer want to kill
Update: Oh, there is Fuck Yeah Google Search (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) f_yeah_g_search).
current music: Roxy Music - Platinum collection disc 3
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(Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, October 11th, 2009
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8:45 PM
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1:33 AM - Conflicts of Interest
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One of my hobbies is to come up with overly simplified naive small solutions to huge problems. Here is another one that I've come up with.US Senators and House Representatives (and other politicians) are not allowed to vote on bills (etc.) where there is a conflict of interest. For example, if they get money from health insurance companies, they can't vote on health care. If a bill has earmarks for their state, they can't vote on that either. If they used to be the CEO of a defense contractor, they can't be making decisions about wars. You know, very basic rules about gross conflicts of interest. If people want to march on the streets, this is the issue they should be doing it on. Everything else is noise.
You're welcome.
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(Give your own rant)
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| Friday, October 9th, 2009
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1:06 AM - The Lost Symbol Rant
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| Sunday, October 4th, 2009
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2:15 PM
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| Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
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12:33 PM
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Uncharacteristically, Fake Steve got on a soap box today.You know what? Like it or not, the whole goddamn world is going to shift away from fossil fuels. It's going to happen. And we're going to miss it. We've spent decades underfunding our scientists, treating them like shit, starving them of resources. Now, Obama has promised to boost spending, but guess what? Even if our scientists come up with great new technologies, our idiot politicians will do their best to keep anyone from being able to use them. The oil companies will unleash Glenn Beck and his army of frigtards to attack the proponents of change, just like the health insurace companies have done with on the issue of health care reform. Solar energy? It sounds so ... socialist. Carbon sequestration? Isn't that some kind of secret plan to take away our freedom? What does Glenn Beck care? He gets a boost in the ratings, and so what if the country gets fucked? Better yet, he and the dupes who listen to them think they're being patriotic. It would all be hilarious if it weren't so insanely tragic.
So here's what happens to us. We'll shift to new energy, because we'll have no choice. But we won't buy our fuel cells and solar panels and other power-generation technology from American companies. We'll buy it from the Chinese. Better yet, we'll buy it with money we've borrowed ... from the Chinese. Does nobody see this? We're living on heroin here, drugged out and happy. Our drug dealer is happy to keep the China White flowing, at incredibly reasonable prices. Why not? How better to compete with an enemy than to drug everyone in his camp?
And all this talk in Washington about bold action, and what a great and powerful nation we are, how brilliant and innovative? All this stirring music with trumpets blaring and soaring strings? Bullshit. This is all just a lullaby we're singing to keep ourselves asleep, as our empire slides away. (Link)
current music: Beardfish - Destined Solitaire
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(Give your own rant)
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| Monday, September 21st, 2009
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11:36 PM - Karate
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I went to the campus goju karate club and I liked it. They meet three times a week. There is a big focus on physical fitness. We didn't do any kata, since it was a trial class with mostly beginners. Oh, the price $30 for the term. I certainty like that. The energy was light and fun. We went out for beers after wards, well I donated my beer to the group.
One thing though is that the Sensei is an Objectivist. One who hasn't read any other philosophy. I tried to avoid any rants past things like "She hadn't read a single word of Kant and for a while I did think that she didn't read Aristotle and Plato, but she claims she did in her letters, so I'll take her word for it." I mostly tried to be good with some success. I did nod when he went on about how he liked her axioms and only said "She did say that."
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4:04 PM - Snarky Movie Review
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Twilight: Close ups of people looking constipated. That is all.
Okay okay, the soundtrack is good (MuteMath, Muse, and Radiohead? Nice) and her friend Jessica is cute.
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(Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, September 13th, 2009
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11:09 PM - Tromsö
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The Tromsö loft bed no longer squeaks, however the cure may be worse than the problem.
After I put it together I initially tried to fix the squeaking problem with vaseline but that didn't work. I suddenly had, what I thought at the time, a great idea. Socks. White tube socks. I had a stack of white tube socks left over from my sock karate kid headband craft project.
I had already used several socks with the bed. I can stand up straight in the space underneath the bed except for the beam down the middle. I hit my head on that several times and I put in socks so that it would be a softer concussion. I didn't screw down the ladder as I have to move it out of the way to get underneath, so it rattled when attached. I have socks on the top of both sides of the ladder where it meets the bed frame to cushion the connection. If white tube socks can solve all those problems, just maybe it could solve the squeaking problem.
The squeaking came from the part of the bed where one metal tubes extends another. This is on all four of the posts. The two back ones were the loudest, so I initially just went to fix them. The tubes had a rather tight fit, but I put socks over the top of the bottom tube and forced the upper tubes down. That took a lot of work. The best move was to move to one side of the back ralling, hold on, jump up in the air, and as I come down do a pull up. An hour or so, with breaks, later, it was finally all the way down and I could fasten everything down. It stopped squeaking.
A week or so later, the front posts started squeaking. A little at first and then it was horrible. I should note that trying to be as still as possible made it worse. The smaller movements were the loudest. If I attempted to make myself seasick by rocking the bed, it was fairly quiet.
I partially disassemble the bed to put socks between the two parts of the post. The top parts of the post aren't coming down. I can't really do the jump-pullup move as this part of the bed is against the wall and there is no room for my legs to swing past. I'm also less patient with the whole thing. My thinking now is that if I put the bed back together, my weight and the weight of the mattress will slowly push down the upper tube. That's what I did. It's reassembled and the front of the bed is about two inches higher than the bottom. The blood will flow down to my feet I guess.
If it's not down all the way in a week, well, I guess I'll get some rubber mallets or maybe some large weights with ropes. Shrug. We'll see.
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| Saturday, September 12th, 2009
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3:41 PM - Rough Yudansha Class Notes
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I guess I’ve been out of karate too long. My kata retention is a bit weak today. I also forgot to bring a pen and paper. This post will be iffy. I should have had some tea before this 9 am class.
Okay, at today’s Yudansha class we did some jo drills, noboriru no jo sho, seisan (the shorinji version), and a breathing exercise.
( Read more... )
current music: 801 - 801 Live
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(Give your own rant)
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| Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
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6:08 PM - Getting My Ringo On
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I almost ran into Maiya today. I was making a bee line out the back door of the HMV just as she was coming in the front door. She accurately guessed that I just bought the new The Beatles: Rock Band game and was rushing home to play it. I guess I was so excited that I wasn't aware of my surroundings.
Maiya merely thinks she has heard of The Beatles before, so I've been teaching her about them. She is amused by my enthusiasm. Gee, wait until I tell her about bands like Rush, Yes, Mute Math, or Frost*!
The game has fun playful transitional videos, polished gameplay, and is fun to play.
The one thing is my Omega Pedal. I'm playing on Expert and so the bass drum pedal's tendency to double hit is especially annoying, so I've spent more time fiddling with it than playing the game. I just picked up some more ratchet bits, so maybe I can fix it. Update: Dammit, the bits don't fit my ratchet.
Oh ya, speaking of Rock Band. Freezepop had a few DLC songs come out yesterday. Hot damn, they are fun to play. They might seem easy at first sight, but they are challenging in a fun way.
current music: Oceansize
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(5 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
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12:06 AM
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Classes start in a week. I have three econ classes, but I'm really looking forward to the one psych class. It's physiological psychology aka neuro-psych. It seems whenever I go off on one of my philosophical moods lately, it quickly stops at 'dammit, I need to know more neuropsychology'.
For example: It's not "How do we find meaning in a meaningless word?". It's "Why do we seek meaning?" or more precisely "What lights up in our brains to make us feel like we need meaning?". (Similarly, "What lights up that makes us need to feel unique?".) Meaning is one of those old metaphors that we need to throw out. We find something meaningful because it lights up parts of our brain and meaning is no better a metaphor than saying something tastes salty. That is, it's just naming a feeling. We need to look at what happens in the brain. What does feeling meaningfulness do to us? Dammit, I need to know more neuro-psychology to get at better metaphors.
Or: If I'm a seeker, what am I seeking? I need better metaphors. Dammit, I need to know more neuro-psychology.
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(3 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Saturday, September 5th, 2009
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8:09 PM - Functional!
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| Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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9:20 PM - Free Game?
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So there is a deal that you can get a free copy of Guitar Hero Van Halen if you buy Guitar Hero 5 in September... but it is only for Americans. You definitely can't use a mailing address outside the states, but I'm not 100% positive that you can't get the free game if you bought it in Canada but have a US mailing address.
Do any locals have a US post office box or mailing address that I use? It's worth a stamp to see if I can get the free game.
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(Give your own rant)
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1:27 PM - Guitar Hero 5
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It's premature to review this since it only came out two days ago, but here are my first impressions. Guitar Hero 5 makes me want to play Rock Band. I don't want to be a Rock Band fanboy and I keep telling myself that it is the same game, but I don't like the Guitar Hero band series as much as the Rock Band series. Guitar Hero World Tour similarly fell a bit flat for me.
Why might this be? One things is the focus. When you hear from the Rock Band creators they are always talking about how seriously they take the playlist. They want to pick songs that are fun to play. The focus with Guitar Hero seems to be on the avatars, videos, and scenes. Rock Band has those too, but Rock Band tries to get you into the setting while Guitar Hero creates nonsensical stuff that a 12-year-old boy on dope would find "AWESOME!". You know, ferris wheels that fall off, pirate ships flown by birds, and Satan. Coolness, rather than being fun, is what matters.
The avatars based on real people kinda creep me out when they are singing songs they really shouldn't be singing. Ozzie doesn't have that range. I have to admit though I was freaked out once with Rock Band's avatars as in a set they don't change the sex of the singer when the song changes. They have a partially shirtless blond effeminate guy and when he was singing a Blondie song, just for a split second, I thought they had a topless Debbie Harry.
The skill levels also feel better in Rock Band. It seems that in Rock Band they test out what people at a certain skill level have difficulty with and base the difficulty on that. Guitar Hero appears to have a hard and fast rule. One, two, and three limbs at a time for easy, medium, and hard. That makes sense as a starting point, but it makes the songs' difficulty a bit uneven compared to Rock Band.
There are a few songs I'm very happy to see, particular the ones by King Crimson, A Perfect Circle, and Muse. I also liked that I could import some of the songs from World Tour, but was baffled when less than half of them were importable. Shrug. At least The Mars Volta and Wings songs were in there.
I might pick up some of the many other GH titles of this year (Smash Hits, Metallica, Van Halen, and possibly even Band Hero), but I'll wait until they are less than $30.
Anyway, the important thing is that The Beatles: Rock Band comes out in less than a week! I'll be getting my Ringo on.
current music: Porcupine Tree - The Incident
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
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8:36 PM - Room
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The landlord I hadn't met before came over to show one of the rooms to a potential roommate. I had my door open and they were blown away by my room. The landlord said it was the best room in the city. Huh. He was going to add that it needed a stereo system until he saw it, so he joked that I needed to add another desk in here. He hadn't even seen the Drum Rocker set yet.
This is funny as my room was a nightmare a week ago. I had the mattress on the floor with clothes taking up the remaining floor space and the smell wasn't yet under control. I didn't know how long I'd be here, so I hadn't really nested yet. I'm now here for a while, so I picked up a loft bed (Tromsö by Ikea), bought two new mini-bookcases and brought over two other bookcases. I also brought an old 17" CRT monitor from home.
I don't have a digital camera, so I can only show you some webcam pics. The center desk has the CRT monitor and an LCD monitor on it. The CRT is for the desktop Ubuntu computer and the LCD is shared between the computer and XBox 360. The LCD monitor is placed so that it can rotate around so that I can see it from the Drum Rocker behind the desk and under the loft bed. There is a bookcase facing that desk. The other desk has the laptop and three half-sized Billy bookcases. The speakers connected to the ipod are there. There is a little Görm endtable at the end with a fan and a jug of water. There are two Billy bookcases on the other side and there is a Görm shelf for my non-hanging clothes.
The Tromsö loft bed was squeaking, so I had to vaseline up a few points where the metal connects. It's better, but I think I need to take it apart for a more through vaselining.
The room is not done yet, but it's getting close.
Update: The squeaking is gone! I used tube socks instead between the interlocking poles.
current music: MuteMath - Armistice
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(1 counter-rant | Give your own rant)
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| Saturday, August 29th, 2009
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12:44 PM - Over-Analyzing GamerPoints
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Three of the basics of over-analysis is that it should:
1. Be meaningless
2. Be taken way too seriously
3. Involves pivot tables
GamerPoints on the XBox 360 are perfect for over-analysis. It's completely meaningless and if anything it is a negative. Having a very high GamerScore is like being a virgin for a very long time. Yet, people can get very competitive with it.
If you get all the GamerPoints in a game, you get 1000 points. Most people have something in the hundreds or thousands and then after a while it can be in the tens of thousands. Of the 50,000ish people at TrueAchievements.com, around 900 are in the hundreds of thousands.
TrueAchievements.com is a great place for over-analysis. They have tracked how many people have gotten an achievement and have generated a multiplier to show how hard that achievement is. They sum up the achievement's GamerScore times the multiplier to get the TrueAchievement score.
Now for gamerscore whoring, this multiplier could also be used to find out how easy the achievement is. It would be nice to find out which games have the most easy achievements. That is, which game you should be playing if you want to boost your GamerScore. Here we find the sum of the GamerScore divided by the multiplier. Unfortunately, TrueAchievements.com does not calculate that.
Pivot tables to the rescue! Go to the My Easy Achievements page and copy and paste special the first ten or so pages into Excel. Add in a GS/TA column. Sort by the game's name. Create a pivot table with the name in the column. Create a new field of sum ('GS/TA') and have that as the data. Sort by sum ('GS/TA').
Now I know what games to play to boost my GamerScore from the games I own. Let's see. Bionicle Heroes, Eragon, Kung Fu Panda, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty: World at War, Crackdown, Viva Piñata: Party Animals, Spider-Man 3, Gears of War, and The Darkness mark the top ten games for me to whore my GamerScore. Oh there is the problem; I need to playing the games I bought for the nephews.
I was reading the latest issue of Official XBox Magazine and two people there had a contest who could get the most GamerScores starting from scratch in five working days. The both of them got around 6,000 points whereas I finally broke 10,000 on my GamerScore after a year or so. I clearly haven't been whoring myself. Mind you, I don't have access to oxm's library of games. There is a new store back home selling used games for cheap. I picked up a bunch of cheapies (including top ten whore games Bionicle Heroes, Eragon, and Crackdown) and--just because I need to start whoring--I even picked up Avatar: The Burning Earth which requires you to hit the 'X' button 70 times to get 1000 points. It's not on the list as I have already went through that <2mins adventure.
current music: Oceansize
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(3 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
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6:10 PM - Tips for traveling in Toronto
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| Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
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12:30 AM - Who is a conservative commentator I should be reading?
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Who is a conservative-leaning commentator I should be reading? I hate to have to say this but I'm looking for someone who isn't lying, making shit up, intentionally misrepresenting, crazy, or ignorant. I keep trying but I must be going to the wrong spots, 'cause dear Eris, that's what I'm reading. *cough* Thomas Sowell *cough*
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(7 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Monday, August 17th, 2009
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11:02 PM - Nonoperating System (rant)
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In the first month here my laptop with XP became unusable, so I reformatted and reinstalled. Now, just two and a half months later, XP became unusable again. I use it mainly as a media machine, so 'unusable' means I can't play audio and video without chugging. I reformatted and reinstalled XP again over the weekend. Today, it's back to being unusable again. Dammit.
I used Windows on that laptop originally because I had been programming in Visual Studio and such, so linux wasn't an option. My desktop though is Ubuntu.
I suppose should go switch to Ubuntu on the laptop, but the problem is that it is using external drives. It doesn't seem to matter what file system I use, switching the operating system to access an external drive has always seems to kill those drives for me. Not right away, of course, but when I least expect it. I really don't want to burn hundreds of DVDs to back everything up first. Blu-ray is still kinda pricey. Grrr.
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(Give your own rant)
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7:39 PM - White House Reveals Obama Is Bipolar, Has Entered Depressive Phase
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| Sunday, August 16th, 2009
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8:10 PM - Dumb Science Question
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Let's say we have something floating in the stratosphere above the arctic that temporarily holds the surrounding gas. It then radiates it with a lot of electromagnetic energy or otherwise gives it enough kinetic energy to reach escape velocity before releasing it. Or, instead of the balloon, maybe have stations transmitting the electromagnetic energy from a few places on the ground interfering in the stratosphere.
Why haven't I just solved global warming?
Update: This might work better inside a smoke stack. So, why haven't I just given us clean coal as well? You're welcome.
current music: Porcupine Tree - On The Sunday of Life
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(6 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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3:13 PM - How difficult is a boycott of Glenn Beck's advertisers?
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Well, that depends. Are we including companies that say they are going to stop but it hasn't been confirmed yet? It's a lot more difficult then. That list includes Best Buy (Xbox 360 games on sale), Campbell Soup (I like my soup just like I like my women... Chunky), Chrysler (okay, that one is easy), General Motors (easy), Kelloggs (I don't eat cereal), Kraft Foods (I know I'm Canadian, but I don't like Kraft Dinner), Nestle (I haven't had chocolate in a while, so this is pretty easy--no dog food or powerbars lately either), and Pfizer (What? No Viagra?!? Crap).
It's much easier if we only look at companies sticking with Beck. Apple? I already have an iPod and I'd probably go with another MP3 player if I bought a new one (one that doesn't use iTunes or special file management). I can't afford Macs. Brita Filter? I used to buy those, but haven't for years. Healthy Choice? I'm a chronically single male, so I love frozen food. I think I've bought Healthy Choice before, but I prefer Michelina's. Radio Shack? I think I've spent less than $10 there in the last ten years. I can get my audio cable converters elsewhere. Red Lobster? Yeah, I'm a broke student. No issue there. Wall Street Journal? I have their economy videos in my feed. If I cover my eyes during the ads before the videos, can I keep this one? Walmart? Hey, I like Walmart, but I haven't gone there in a while. There isn't one near me anyway. No really.
current music: MuteMath - early demo
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(Give your own rant)
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1:06 AM - Discover Your Inner Economist and The Watchmen
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Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler "Marginal Revolution" Cowen
Meh. A bunch of amusing stories. I think they were collected for some reason, but the theme of the book was lost on me. I didn't really learn any economics from it. I'm not even sure what he actually meant by "Inner Economist" beyond quirky things he personally thinks. I'd said there was more behavioural psychology than economics in his thoughts. I'll probably look back to it if I'm looking for good ethnic food when traveling or want to buy expensive art. Actually, I'm a bit too lower middle class for a lot of his insights. I liked a lot of the stories here, don't get me wrong. It just felt more like an anthology of random blog posts than a book with a unified theme.
Robin Hanson is mentioned and he sounds interesting, so I've added his blog into my feed.
One thing that stuck out was when he made fun of Neil "Style" Strauss. Strauss tells a story of a failed attempt at kissing a woman, which he then ignored her, and then successfully kissed her on the second attempt. I thought both of them interpreted it wrong. Strauss talked about reward-punishment and that women's first reaction is 'no', but if they really thought about it, they would really want to kiss Neil Strauss. Meh. Cowen mocked Strauss' "hard to get" routine and suggested saying oneliners that upsell yourself instead. Meh. The example sounded like regular "shit testing". He didn't react badly to the mild rejection, so he did okay. That's it. *shrug*
I also picked up Cowen's Create Your Own Economy book. Since I'm pretty lukewarm about Discover Your Inner Economist, I'm not sure if I should read this one as well. Has anybody read it?
The Watchmen (Movies and comic series)
I watched both versions of the movie, plus the Freighter cartoon, when they hit DVD. I loved it. I liked the changes and they seemed to make the story move better. Most of the changes were taking verbatim lines and moving them somewhere else. The opening was great as it started with some action, the credits gave a lot of flavour to the The Minutemen, and it lead into the real opening.
Well, I loved the movie until... ( Click for spoilers )
current music: The Flowerkings - Stardust We Are
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Saturday, August 15th, 2009
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12:02 PM - That band went on and failed
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Eventually [Paul] Meany invited [Darren] King to drum in Earthsuit, his Christian band. At his tryout, King punctured the drums by striking them too hard and blew out the band’s sound system. Maybe that was a sign.
The experiment lasted two months, and then two band members complained that King’s overambitious, manic drumming was throwing them off. They convinced Meany to give him the ax.
“That band went on, as Darren likes to recall, and failed,” Meany said.
Later, the pair dove into the new project [MuteMath]. They recruited Hill and Mitchell-Cardenas from Earthsuit for a new band that kept evolving its sound before settling on layered melodic, spacey synths and rock guitar laid over syncopated, frantic drums and computer beats. (Link) Also from that interviewthey were promptly scolded for kidnapping the dog and giving him Valium
current music: MuteMath - Armistice
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(Give your own rant)
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| Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
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1:03 PM
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