Probabalistic Reasoning

Digg joke

2008-11-19T15:28:58Z

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers.

TF2

2008-08-19T17:52:08Z

I just started playing TF2 after beating half-life 2 and portal - are any of you (all 2 of you), still playing? I'd love to smash some faces with peers.

I have trouble connecting to servers sometimes, not sure if you guys had that issue or not...

A Weekend of Hacking

2008-08-17T04:02:19Z

Read more if you care about nerd stuff I do:

http://leagueofrobots.blogspot.com/

astronomican @ 2008-03-14T09:46:00

2008-03-14T14:49:07Z

I don't know what brought it up - but Spacemoose (the really hilarious comic) came up in conversation lately, so I wondered what the creator had been up to:

Dr. Adam Thrasher
Assistant Professor
Health and Human Performance

During his postdoctoral fellowship in Toronto, Canada, Dr. Thrasher designed a research program in which he developed a new neuroprosthesis for walking therapy in people with chronic spinal cord injury.

astronomican @ 2008-01-09T13:50:00

2008-01-09T19:58:06Z

This was posted on the algorithms community.

"Ok, so I obviously don't know how the computer works, or the internet. But I was just thinking, is it hard to make your own version of livejournal? Do I need to take a bunch of computer programming to do that? Cuz I was thinking of making my own, except it's not livejournal, more like a place for people to create their own profile page. And no it's not another facebook, myspace.. thing. But yeah, is it possible?"

Haha.

http://community.livejournal.com/algorithms/94263.html

This has been a tough month.

2007-12-17T22:04:57Z

Farewell. :(

Golden Compass

2007-12-15T06:49:30Z

Disclaimer: If you liked the movie and are going to be touchy about it, look away now.

I hated this freaking movie. I have not read the books. With that said, what the fuck? It is obvious to me that they absolutely shredded the book, because I had no clue what anything had to do with anything.

I didn't have any real issue with the story itself, except I have no idea who the people, places, and major players are. After that(!), it's not bad, fairly engaging even. However, I have never seen a movie where I cared less about all the characters in it. Let's follow this sequence of events:

1) girl gets off boat
2) girl meets guy, guy offers to help with his airplane (why?)
3) girl meets bear, tells bear where armor is, bear takes her at face value and BEFORE EVEN GETTING THE ARMOR, takes a life oath (what!?)

Apparently all that is needed is 10 seconds of dialogue and we can establish two characters as life long friends. I mean literally, at (2), the guy walked up to her and said "neat toy, looks like you are headed for a story, you'll need some help?" yeah, ok...

It's like when you are playing Warcraft and you are doing a long quest chain, with only 5 lines of text to explain why this matters. I felt it was that damn shallow.

I could go on, but meh.

Oh, I forgot.

2007-12-12T19:32:13Z

I had been meaning to post this. Our dog tore her ACL a couple of weeks ago. She was running down a hill and suddenly came up lame, limping and whining towards me. She rested for the next couple of days until we took her to the vet, where they sedated her and took x-rays. They couldn't tell if it was fully torn or partially torn (due to inflammation), so they sent her home with some meds. The very next day she was better, so it's probably just partially torn. At this point she walks around with no limp and minimal signs of injury (slight favoring of one leg).

Regardless, she will probably have to have surgery as dogs don't know they should go slowly and at some point it'll be fully torn. I'm a very sad camper, but the surgery is supposed to return the dog to near full capacity, so my hope is that one day I can take her to the park and watch her sprint for a toy. It also impacts my graduate classes, as classes + dog surgery are a) expensive and b) time consuming, and I'm not sure I'd be able to reasonably handle both at the same time.

The whole "not being able to do anything but wait" is freaking killing me.

FYI

2007-11-16T18:55:22Z

I feel betrayed every time I see the movie Heat on the cable channel, flip to it, and it is the Burt Reynolds version.

astronomican @ 2007-11-03T22:39:00

2007-11-04T03:47:11Z

We saw American Gangster, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Although, seriously, it's bad when I laugh out loud to something not funny: the previews to National Treasure: Book of Secrets. To quote: "The President's book of secrets. A collection of documents for President's eyes only. The truth behind the JFK conspiracy. The missing minutes from the Watergate tapes. And of course. Area 51."

I burst out laughing and said, "That's terrible!" Get these writers together with the Transformers people ASAP, and we've got $$$.

Wee

2007-10-30T17:33:21Z

...

2007-10-01T16:17:27Z

Why do I own Mystery Men?

astronomican @ 2007-09-28T14:56:00

2007-09-28T19:58:49Z

Mmk.

Halo 3 is probably the most fun I've had in a video game since Tribes: Shifter, almost 10 years ago.

There aren't that many 'new' things here, it's just that everything is perfect this time around.

Although they do have a new weapon called the Gravity Hammer which is just amazingly fun.

I'm completely floored.

astronomican @ 2007-08-27T08:24:00

2007-08-27T13:28:08Z

I finally decided, with under an hour before it started, to drop my class this semester. I really hated last Fall semester not having free time to enjoy the season. I would rather take a Spring and Summer class than have to go to school in Fall.

I'm experiencing a mixture of relief and a tiny amount of... disappointment?

K starts her job at Mutual today. Good luck, kristalbot!

Oh, hi

2007-07-25T14:35:03Z

So, hey.

Are you all still playing nerd stuff on the weekends? If so what, when, where? I'm interested in doing nerd stuff again.

Mr. Hale has a really small family.

2007-07-16T21:12:30Z

"Robert Hale, a Bible-toting father of 15 who calls himself Papa Pilgrim, became an anti-government celebrity in Alaska by driving a bulldozer across a national park that encircles his land.

[...]

He said his children read only the Bible, always bathed with their clothes on and were not allowed to see one another naked.

[...]

He pleaded no contest to multiple charges that he raped one of his daughters"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/26/AR2006122600847.html

Let's count to 10

2007-06-13T18:56:40Z

HAI
I HAS A CHEEZBURGER ITZ 1

IM IN YR LOOP
VISIBLE "I has dis many: " N CHEEZBURGER
IZ CHEEZBURGER BIGGER THAN 10 O RLY?
YA RLY
GTFO
NO WAI
UP CHEEZBURGER!!1
KTHX
KTHX

KTHXBYE

astronomican @ 2007-05-25T10:22:00

2007-05-25T15:24:01Z

overheardinnewyork.com is genius!

Blond Tourist Bimbo: I've never even heard of the G Train.
Blond Local Bimbo: Yeah, it's a ghetto train.
Blond Tourist Bimbo: Where does it go?
Blond Local Bimbo: Nowhere.
Black eight-year-old boy: Except my home, bitch.

book report

2007-05-17T21:22:22Z

horus kills the emprr using a giant battle chicken however the emprr has a clone of himself stored away on earth and grows a million baby emperors who all turn out to cannabalize each other horus then dies of aids book ends

share urz

Niihau

2007-05-14T02:50:36Z

Kristal and I just got back from Kauai. We were there for a week.

I asked her to marry me on this beach, she said yes!

More later...

astronomican @ 2007-04-30T10:26:00

2007-04-30T15:36:32Z

The Sopranos: the show with 45 minutes of fluff and five minutes of plot jammed into the end.

This is not to say that I don't thoroughly enjoy each episode by itself, but I feel like I am in the middle of season 3. Come on, I have seen almost every one of these subplots before.

I have the same feeling I had when I used to watch X-Files: Just go somewhere! I don't care where, but do it.

astronomican @ 2007-04-22T10:03:00

2007-04-22T15:05:16Z

Hot Fuzz is pure genius.

Flights!

2007-04-13T16:37:37Z

Let me start from the beginning. I was supposed to go to San Antonio on Monday at 4. When I got to the airport, the ticket person said I wasn't going to make me a connecting flight, so he rebooked me. The only flight available was the next morning at 6:20, flying to Dallas, then San Antonio, arriving at 10:20.

I wake up at 4, get to the airport, make my flight, and get to Lackland AFB about noon. Everything goes well. Meetings that day and Wednesday, with my boss and I leaving Wednesday night at 6:20. We are flying to Atlanta, then to Omaha(don't ask). Flight leaves SA without a hitch, but is delayed on landing in Atlanta due to weather. We get off the airplane at 10pm, flight to Omaha leaves at 10:10. We then proceed to run across the airport(with a giant hulking Alienware laptop on my back) to get to the gate at 10:08, only to find the doors have been closed and we have to rebook.

We stand in line for an hour, she rebooks us for the next morning. We stay in some trashy Super 8 by the airport, where a loud obnoxious train wakes me up twice. I get four hours of sleep. The next day(Thursday now), our flight departing at 9:00 am gets delayed for mechanical problems. We leave at 11 and I get in Omaha at 12:30.

On the plus side, I was told not to come in today. Naturally, I was given a large sum of homework yesterday. /wrists

Random Things

2007-04-03T19:47:20Z

I go to San Antonio again next week, Tuesday/Wednesday.
K-bot and I are going to Kauai May 5-11, we are staying at the Sheraton Kauai right on the beach.
I'm supposed to be reading a paper for work, "Evaluating Natural Language Processing Applications Applied to Outbreak and Disease Surveillance"... zzzz.
I have 8 people, that while I am not their official manager, are tasked and overseen by me. I'm not sure how that happened, and I'm still surprised every time I give somebody a task to do.
I hate my backyard right now. I need to plant a tree and some actual plants.
I bought new basketball shoes, they are about a 100% improvement. Last night while playing ball at HPER the court next to us got into a huge argument and I thought punches were going to be thrown. Alas, nothing happened.
I've played basketball twice a week for the past 3 months, which is probably a record for me.
No softball this year, they were full! I didn't even know that happened.
I poked K-bot in the eye with my finger last night, she can barely open it today.

Haha.

2007-03-25T01:52:29Z

Somebody had to realize that was going to look strange...