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Fine arts

Some of George’s favorite videos

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Some new entries in Webster’s

Alanis how did you make this list? [2] with lyrics.

The Jingler Jangler Rangler Dangler (JJ for short) has a little too much juke box money but still figures out how to leave a letter by the sea.

Not as lucky as you think.

Vera looks so much like my mother. My dad, who flew on B-17’s, liked her. These were songs giving a force of hope against an indomitable enemy. Any record from 1936 moves me.

Me vida es su tombola. Is this related to boozing it up on the street?

I’m blue over you.

Did you make it in Webster’s? [2, 3].

Computer Science

Probabilistic network successes and guaranteed misuses

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There is a lot to be said about probabilistic networks. They can be used to model many things from languages to social networks. And there are many kinds of probabilistic networks and they are a topic of active publishing at the moment.

Recently I tried a simple example based on a neat code called dyna. This pdf shows the use of a probabilistic network to “reason” or parse a number of input sentences. A set of probabilities that describe the probabilities of word transitions is supplied, and the system “miraculously” interprets the natural language grammar.

Then there is the question of whether I violated the license. The technique itself can get you into trouble using the same “flawed” reasoning that it performs itself (how ironic). Consider the following.

  • Sarcastic. Regarding dyna: I only ran one example, the one I sent you. One might reason it most likely that I violated a license but I have not. If I do anything commercial I will write my own codes. It can be dangerous even to download a code since circumstantially they can infer guilt. You can be punished for likely guilt even though you are innocent. It is getting to be that guilt or innocence is not the question but instead what the likelihoods are. This would be a misuse of probabilistic reasoning. Anyway this is what the future holds. The reasoning probably needs to be altered to find the most likely medical explanation. Anyway this is sarcastic but the future is clear and already determined, so we are still not free.
    • I do not violate software licenses. If I said this two more times I’d be guilty though, probably.
    • That’s the thing about free software: it’s fascist.
    • Guilt or innocence is determined by how much money you give lawyers, not by whether you are actually innocent or guilty.
Computer Science

Some very recent CS notes on languages, etc.

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I am a little surprised that my technical posts are getting some attention: at least from the WordPress community. There is interest in things technical. There is so much CS on the internet, actually. I wrote a short piece on blogging with WordPress and a few people made some superlative comments, which actually surprised me. A little social support really goes a long ways.

My friend Mike Iltis called me last night and we talked for around 3 hours on things technical. (I have the bottom of the line cell phone plan). Mike, who often teaches at the university, had sent me a new set of academic links on some interesting topics, and I share a few of them below. I am not an academic but am more half way in between academia and industry. Industry people regard me as an academic and academics see me as a commercial developer. (I was a commercial developer in Silicon Valley several years ago.) Anyway I do have academic interests, but I realize that there is very much that I do not know or understand. I am mentioning Mike Iltis as a reference for the links below.

  • Self similar languages.
  • There is one object oriented program and it is this. Every program is one object which is a recursive collection of objects, which in turn are collections of objects. Every object program is isomorphic to this program, and obviously this program is self similar to all of its parts. Mathematically and in terms of formal logic, these notions are more complex than they naively seem to appear.
  • There are some really nice CS spots on the web.
  • Here is some info on an interesting programming language called pliant. [2].
  • Set theory: Setl programming language. [2].
  • Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
    • Natural language interpretation (automated understanding) is a good topic. With all of the writing occurring especially since the advent of the blog, only computers will be able to read it all.
About this site

About my site being down

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My website has been down since about noon on Thursday. It seems to have decided to take a sudden crash. This is the longest my site has been down at least as long as I can remember. I am writing this note offline hoping I can post it if/when my site gets back up.

This is not an apology since there is little I can do about it. I need to wait for my provider to get it back up.

I am lucky that I had just done a backup of my WordPress information. I hope that this is not the time to test the backup system.

Many people must be frustrated by not being able to reach my site. I am frustrated, too.

About this site

September 2009 key words for my site

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Here are some search key words for the month of September. 12 of these hits are due to Google.

It is amazing that people actually search for this stuff.

The list of search keywords is given below

  • 999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
  • derivation of fibonacci sequence
  • finding the interval where an integral is minimized
  • fibonacci ratio derivation
  • automated theorem proving news
  • arclite theme by digitalnature | powered by wordpress
  • fibonacci number derivation closed form expression
  • /999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
  • fibonacci number derivations
  • brachistochrome
  • elementary variational methods
  • euler lagrange equation for the variational problem f x y y y
  • bratwurst magazine
Cooking, Photography

A healthy vegetable sandwich on high fiber bread

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The picture below shows a sandwich that I made about a half a year ago. (I am a bit slow in getting some of my photography published.) The sandwich is on high fiber bread and I poured vegetable oil on the bread instead of butter. This is about the healthiest oil that you can get. Then there are a few leaves of raw but washed Kale. This is high in lutein and is good for the eyes. Then I sliced an onion and put on some sliced cucumbers and put on some alfalfa sprouts. This is about the best sandwich I have ever made. I normally do not eat this well. The pickles are making my mouth water now as I write this and I bought them on sale.

The olive oil adds a nice taste. The sandwich is quite tasty and very healthy.

Ironically after eating a super healthy meal like this, the next day one finds oneself eating a cheesy pizza and it almost nulls out the health effects.

Vegetable sandwith
Vegetable sandwith
Computer Science, Publishing, Technical

So far blogging using WordPress is fantastic plus other blog and web generation comments

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A short analysis comparing a blog to an auto-generation system

WordPress is far better than I thought. It is making internet writing much more pleasant and easy. Last night I worked for hours doing some posts and I found my efficiency to be greatly increased. Normally it can take me 2 hours to publish one daily photo using my old (and very clumsy) system (see more below). WordPress cuts this time by about a factor of 10. This is fantastic.

My old system required images to be uploaded, links to be updated, writing to be done, pages to be validated, programs to be run, etc. All said, about 5-10 pages/files needed to be edited. Then several scripts and programs need to be run. Using a blog, most of these functions are done automatically. In most respects the blog is therefore much better. I can publish one or two photos very quickly now.

I might write up some detailed notes about my old system, which is centered around a tool called qwp (quick web pages). It does use a web page auto-generation tool that I created and it is fancy in some respects. It gives me a little more control but it costs 10 times the time and effort. It takes the html and combines any included files along with any embedded J-script into a template, and then translates it into all J-script. Then that J-script program is compiled into an executable program. The executable program is then run, and its output produces the web page. Other pre-translation steps can involve xslt and markdown translation phases, so included portions can be in xml, markdown, or html. So there are many levels of translation in my old system. My daily photo pictures for the last 2-3 years have been auto-generated using this system. For example, this photo page is auto-generated. It’s fancy, very hard to use, and the web pages don’t look good (- unless I use a better template). But here, WordPress is 10 times faster and easier, and the results look a lot better.

The ajax based front end is pretty fancy and is equivalent to using a simple Microsoft Word to create your writing. This writing is wysiwyg (what you see is what you get).

I am finally catching on to blogging. Many people have blogged for years.