Random Thoughts and Events

Ok, so updates are far and few between around here (so sue me, nobody reads this anyway ;-)). Classes are over for the summer (see an entire semester without updates!) and I just read my last entry. I'd like to apologize for my poor spelling and bad grammar (not that the latter will improve in the message). It was almost 5 in the morning and I had just finished a final. Anyways, my new bone is school "Zero Tolerance Policies" I would be really happy if someone would point me to the originator of this brilliant plan so I could exercise a little "Zero Tolerance" of my own. (Oh! I'm sorry! Was that violent? Antisocial perhaps? Too bad, you're gonna have to live with it, so if you don't consider yourself responsible enough to deal with irony you're going to have to leave now. This means 99% of Americans cannot read the rest of this post. On a side rant, what is it with Americans and their complete inability to deal with irony as a valid form of humor? Is it 'cause it tends to be a little more subtle then your average "Jackass" level humor? *sigh* Sometimes this place (the US) makes me want to cry. Our president is, for all practical purposes, illiterate---how else could he possibly say the things he does WHEN HIS SPEECH IS WRITTEN ON A PIECE OR PAPER/TELEPROMPTER RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. You know what I want to see? A politicial that can stand up and deliver and entire speech without once having to look at his notes. What the hell happened to oration and public speaking? It's not like politicians are by-and-large good for much else so they should be at least able to memorize a paragraph or two of prose. *sheesh*). Okay, enough, back to zero tolerance.

Your average person-on-the-street (assuming they knew what zero tolerance policies were) would assume its the result of this Columbine business (Not going to go there except---this is what happens when you turn your children into sheep, they get eaten by wolves. The shepherds are incompetent so the only one to look out for you is yourself. You think I'm crass for saying that. Insensitive? You and your SUV can stop reading now.) but I'm guessing that Columbine was just a nice excuse to launch these sorts of crackdown policies. Why? School administrators are scared of students. Really scared. I mean really really really scared. The 50s are over and 16 year-olds want to vote (and why not I say! The argument is they couldn't possibly grasp the political process and make decent decisions. So what, neither can most of the other voters. People lets the evening news tell them how to vote. Maybe a bunch of pro-active teenagers would give this country a kick-in-the-ass. Maybe even give someone not the Democrats-- who suck, or the Republicans-- who also suck a chance.... Though not the Liberatarians, their foreign policy would be scary-bad.). Scary shit, eh? Anyways, Zero Tolerance gives these "administrators" (They don't appear to administrate much except maybe the leather in their SUVs--- paid for by our taxes) the ability to eliminate due process entirely and essentially destroy anything even remotely resembling civil rights for the students. Weak sauce. And they claim to be the good guys! Wow. Someday I'm gonna have kids and I'm envisioning having to call down some serious wrath on these people. Damn its gonna be fun, but these idiots need people like me to make their lives a living hell...

Ok, I'm calming down. I'm less pissed now (some story about a kid drawing a gun...on a piece of paper... set me off. I drew lots of weapons in school, and I'm only mildly insane. Oh, right. I'm insane but with useful job skills so that makes it OK....) Incidentally, if that principal (I forget which school, in the Northeast somewhere) who had the kids fight in the school basement reads this: Right On! Personally, I would have used gloves since bare knuckles tend to tear skin and that means stitches and pissing off your local lump-n-bump clinic--- at the very least bag gloves if you want these kids to get the "full impact" of fighting, that way they get bruised instead of torn... Maybe break a rib or something if you're really unlikely, but thems the (no pun intended) breaks. I advocate. Fighting hurts. It's the point and kids think they're invincible and won't believe otherwise until they wake up the next morning black-and-blue. 'sides, it gets 'em a little exercise--- and thats good, kids spend too much time sitting and P.E. programs aren't very motivating (I was a chubby kid when I started high school over 200lbs if I remember correctly. I'm not now. Hated P.E. and didn't try very hard and it wasn't very hard. but kids don't want to run a mile for no reason... Then I started crew and that helped, but it took years for me to get it through my head that the number-one priority for working out wasn't some sort of external goal or expectation. It was 'cause I wanted to get the the next level for myself. maybe age is good for something).

*sigh* all right. I'm done for the moment.
posted by Byron Ellis at 12:33 PM

Right, so its been awhile since I've written anything here--- what can I say, I've been somewhat busy. Since I mentioned it last time, my shoulder is healing nicely (though icy bricks suck, scared the hell out of me when I slipped and fell almost on my shoulder :-( ) and hopefully I'll get to start physical therapy soon. Right now it feels like I've got a massive muscle tear that needs to be STREETTTCCHHHHEEEDD, which is more or less what I have (except somebody cut it with a scalpel). Surgery in general is no fun, I don't recommend it (though my anathesiologist was really funny-- or maybe I just think that 'cause he shot me up with a bunch of happy juice :-) ) but I'm glad my surgeons seem to have done a good job.

Moving on, in the thick of finals now. Just finished a take home (its about 4:30am here) and I need to get back to my two remaining projects (time series and bayesian data analysis). Hopefully the latter will start to work soon, were working on an EM algorithm project and mine isn't really working at the moment. Damn. (Funny thing, my prof for the other class seems to have been one of the original creators, along with some other folks also in the department though maybe not here at the time, of the algorithm. I think its funny. Maybe I'm wierd :-) ) But, those should be mostly out of the way by Friday (which is the date of my last exam--- I should prepare for this one, the midterm didn't go so well and I'd really like a decent grade. The prof is a great guy, but having to retake the material might kill me--- not exactly riveting the second time 'round).

Been playing with DocBook recently. I kinda dig it (a little more verbose than TeX but handy for really honkin' big projects or collaborative projects I imagine--- has a lot more organizational stuff than TeX for doing book-length stuff as well... 'sides, it can output to TeX for processing into PDF or whatever). The part I don't dig is MathML----MathML is a truly bad language. Not only is it way to verbose, there is a presentation and a content portion. I don't get it--- just write a math parser guys, preferrably one where I can generate markup quickly. This is why I like TeX $x^2$ is elegant and beautiful whereas <apply> <power/><ci>x</ci><cn>2</cn><apply> is PAINFUL to even consider. YUCK! Guess what? XML? Not a panacea! Oh, and you--- yes, you trying to put vast amounts of numeric data into an XML format. Stop! Have you ever noticed that nobody is considering converting JPG to an XML format? Have you ever considered that a 2-dimensional array of numbers is more-or-less and image? Ever thought that maybe what you were doing was stupid (I don't want to here about incompatibilies between hardware floating point. It's called IEEE floating point, write a conversion macro its not hard. Or, if you're smart you'll go pick up HDF5 from NCSA its a good piece of code and runs most useful platforms... Maybe not your toaster though)

Ok, rambling wearing down. Going to sleep now.
posted by Byron Ellis at 1:42 AM

Ok, so this is my first entry to my blog since I can now actually type on my laptop. Why can't I type you ask? Well, I appear to have broken my shoulder this last sunday snowboarding at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire this last Sunday. Total freak fall on an easy (greenish) run, I landed on my shoulder (after already having dinged it a little earlier that day) and heard a "pop" as it got pulled out from under me. No fun at all. All told the Ski Patrol were right on the ball and I was in the first aid area within a few minutes getting all my x-rays and whatnot taken. Also, the group I was with, HUSC (Harvard University Snowboard Club) also totally took care of me and got me home safe everything.

Sadly, it appears I'm going to need surgery for my shoulder. Apparently I broke a chunk off of the greater tuberosity where the tendon that lets me move my arm away from my body attaches. Since the tendon is still attached to the broken bit it has been pulled pretty far out of alignment (judging from the last x-ray, though I'm certainly no expert... still, it didn't look too spiffy). Basically its really painful and it sucks so they're planning on going in and screwing it down so it can heal properly... I'm not a really big fan of being cut, but I like the thought of limited mobility and loss of mechanical advantage even less.

At any rate, I'll have a better idea of what exactly is involved with the surgery tomorrow after my doctor's appointment.
posted by Byron Ellis at 5:57 PM