Sometimes I listen to myself » Uncategorized

Finally

Charles Kiyanda — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 06:47:51 +0000

After neglecting way too much in my life, I’ve finally defended my thesis. Being in the process of making final corrections, I thought I’d post here a couple of tricks I discovered along the way for the list of abbreviations and the list of symbols. If you’re using latex and (for abbreviations) linux, read on.

List of abbreviations

Took an afternoon, but I remembered how to use grep and sed long enough to craft this little bit of regexp voodoo.

sed -r input.tex ‘s/([a-z]{0,1}[A-Z]{2,})/\n\1\n/g’ | egrep ‘[a-z]{0,1}[A-Z]{2,}’ > output

It’ll catch the acronyms of the form AAAAA or aAAAAA (with obviously any number of As) as well stuff you write in all caps. It also obviously spits out all the acronyms in the order they appear without sorting them nor eliminating doubles. Took me 1.5 hours to do that, figured I didn’t really want to bother with writing a perl script.

List of symbols and variables

I’m stuck doing it by hand, although I found there was a way to automate the list of symbols. Unfortunately it requires some thinking ahead I didn’t do and it would probably take just as long to do it either way now. See here.

Enjoy and happy thesis writing if you’re going through the process as well.

Please be aware the content you browse may be visible to passengers around you.

Charles Kiyanda — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:16:39 +0000

I keep complaining about every little thing around me whenever I travel by plane, but I think I secretly enjoy it. The long lines at security, the overpriced food, the delays (although this time, my first flight is on time), the multiple check points where you have to show every piece of ID you have. At least, the airline companies are slowly getting with the time and we now have wifi onboard. It was about time.

I thought about the topic of this particular post while I was waiting for my carry-on at the “security” check point. The guy operating the x-ray machine looked perplexed while looking at the pink and purple picture of my bag. Just for kicks, I thought I’d make the list of the items that I’ve tested and can make it through the Albuquerque check point:

a 2.5″ diameter cardboard tube (it has pictures rolled inside there, christmas present for my parents and in-laws who, hopefully, don’t read my blog yet)
a camera tripod (with the head unscrewed so it can fit in the carry-on. I guess that makes it just a really big metal stick.)
frozen green chili (wrapped up in plastic, then in paper and then in plastic again. To be fair, it is Albuquerque, so they may be very familiar with what green chili looks like under x-ray.)
a bunch of electronic things (ipod, fm transmitter, headphones) with all the cords mangled together.

and finally, the one which really surprises me

two home made fruit cakes (made by my wife I should mention so nobody thinks I can actually cook). This is my mom’s recipe which is as dense as steel and each cake is wrapped in gauze (and drenched in brandy, hmmmmmm), then wrapped in plastic foil and then wrapped in tin foil. I can’t believe that looks like anything intelligible on an x-ray.

Thank god for airport security keeping me and my holiday festivities safe!

Jamendo fun

Charles Kiyanda — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:31:25 +0000

I’ve been playing with Jamendo lately (anything not to write my thesis). Just found this today. A little bit of a strong autotune effect there and I can’t quite decide if that was intentional or not. Assuming it was, it’s an interesting sound. In the first song of the album “Broken Stereo”, the effect is varied throughout the song. I think I like it. And it’s all legally free, of course.

american healthcare debate

Charles Kiyanda — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:03:06 +0000

As a canadian citizen living in the US (and given the level of disinformation flying around), I feel it’s a public service to post a link to this blog post from an american woman living in the UK and telling her impression of the UK National . . . → Read More: american healthcare debate

wolfram alpha

Charles Kiyanda — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:03:15 +0000

Wolfram (Mathematica) is trying its hands at the “search engine” market. Essentially, I’d call that a “fact engine”. Basically, you put in something like “strength of hurricane katrina” and it returns all kinds of numbers and plots with the path and strength of the hurricane over time. At least, that’s what I understand it to be from a summary of a demo. It’s not launched yet and we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks.

I’m not entirely sure about how great this will be. Can’t go into details now because I have to run to a sandstorm for some experiments, but I’ll get back to this tonight. Basically, I’m not sure the people who are interested in getting “raw” facts rather than commentary are likely to for this service.

Travelling for free

Charles Kiyanda — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:13:06 +0000

The twitchhiker, found this through a news item on cyberpresse [french]. A man travelled for 30 days by leveraging his online contacts. He was following 5 rules, as follows:

can only accept offers from twitter users followign @twitchhiker. Can’t accept offers from a twitterers friend’s dad’s girlfriend
can only plan 3 days in advance
can only spend money on food, drinks and whatever fits in the suitcase
can pick between multiple offers, but if there’s only one offer, it has to be accepted within 48 hours
can only stay 48 hours in the same location. If he can’t move away after 48 hours, the challenge is over and he goes home

The challenge is over (if I’d known, I would have taken that opportunity to finally familiarize myself with twitter), but you can read about his travels on his blog.

This game reminds me of couchsurfing, which I’d like to try at some point. I’m a bit apprehensive about having someone spend the night at my house, especially if I have to go to work during the day. I’m not sure what the social norm is in couchsurfing about giving a key to the house to your visitors or locking them out of the house when you’re not there. Maybe I’ll start by offering to take someone around the area here if they’re visiting New Mexico.

Behind-the-scenes pictures

Charles Kiyanda — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:07:36 +0000

Two very different sets of pictures.

Behind the scenes at netflix

Behind the scenes in Afghanistan.

Airports…again

Charles Kiyanda — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 07:36:25 +0000

Ok, I flew back from Montreal last week and noticed only a few things.

This time, at Montreal security, my stuff got swabbed and [well let me redact this bit too. I'm back at home, now, but I'm not sure I want to get a visit from the FBI. We'll have to see if I change my mind.]
I can now confirm the hoodie thing. I had to switch terminals in Fort Lauderdale and it turns out the airport has security in every terminal. The TSA guard again instructed everyone that “hoodies, sweatshirt and similar things had to be taken off.” He was nice enough to let a girl (who probably only had a bra under her hoodie) keep hers on. TSA vs. fashion, here we come. I’m seriously considering starting a protest group and we just strip naked every time we have to go through a TSA checkpoint.
Speaking of Fort Lauderdale, if you’re going from a cold place to Fort Lauderdale and then back to a cold place, just try to find a way to carry some light shoes and coat rather than winter boots and 5 layers of gore-tex.
Still on about Fort Lauderdale, turns out the Hollywood Airport in Fort Lauderdale has free wi-fi. That makes 2 in the US now, with Albuquerque.
Heard the best public announcement over the intercom in Dallas while waiting for a belated flight. (Apologies to the poor girl, I don’t quite remember her name, so I’ll just make it up.) It went : “Emily Smith, please call home and talk to your mother. Emily Smith, please call your mother.” It’s even funnier if you imagine it in a Jersey accent.

Happy flight if you have to travel.

Airports and airplanes (preview)

Charles Kiyanda — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 03:35:17 +0000

I flew from Albuquerque to Montreal (Canada, not Missourri, thank you very much) recently and observed a few things about airports and airplane procedures

1- [This part of the post has been redacted for the time being. It turns out I'm still on travel and I figured I should wait until I'm back home before I post this. That way, if I get a visit from the FBI, I'll be home when it happens.]

2- The days of crossing security checkpoints completely naked are coming soon! This time, while I was taking my shoes off, an agent came by and gently yelled to everyone that all “sweatshirst, hoodies and other similar things” had to be taken off. Maybe I’ll try and just entirely strip the next time I cross a security checkpoint. That ought to be fun.

3- Can someone tell me what a cross-check is and why flight attendants and airplane pilots now have to say these things on the loudspeakers? I’ve noticed that fact being advertised to all passengers now. (I don’t remember hearing the “prepare for cross-check” announcements before a couple of yeras ago.) Are they just trying to make flight attendants more obviously necessary?

A sad start of the new year (for some)

Charles Kiyanda — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:22:20 +0000

I just got an e-mail in my inbox from the folks at jpgmag announcing the unfortunate demise of the magazine on January 5th. A sad start of the new year, unfortunately. I’m especially sad because, now, three of the sites I liked and touted as great examples of the new way the internet is influencing the real world. Jpgmag was the earliest of the three and most successful. A spin-off of jpgmag was everywheremag, also developed by 8020 publishing (although I think they’re called 8020 media now). Pixish was a recent offering. I’ve written about all three before and was quite excited by all of them. Unfortunately, although the everywheremag website is still up and running, the magazine hasn’t been published since issue 4. Pixish also closed it’s doors in late october 2008 and the successful jpgmag is now defunct as well. The question I have now is why? Jpgmag sold for 6$ per issue (25$ per year) and it was successfully selling advertising although I don’t know at what price, obviously. Still, it was able to raise advertising money, which implies that they sold paper copies. What would have been the “correct” price point for jpgmag to be able to make money (or at least pay its staff and production costs)? By comparison, Lenswork, another photography publication, charged 10$ per copy and sold no advertising before they decided to sell only through a subscription model and no longer at newsstands. To be fair, the company publishing Lenswork also sells other products, which might mean that some of that money supports the periodical publication, I don’t konw.

In any case, had jpgmag sold for 10$ or 12$ a copy, would they have survived? I dwell on the issue of price here since that’s the reason given by the staff for the demise of the site. They tried to seek funding, buyers, etc, but were unable to raise money. It would seem that jpgmag is the latest unfortunate victim of the economic crash. The publication model was interesting and, most importantly, boasted a sizable following. Photographers were interested in participating. If it was really only an issue of price then, it would be interesting to know how much money was needed to make it work. Maybe with some tweaks, this business model could work again and generate a vibrant and inspiring publication once again in the future.