In the end, all is discontinuous

Gah

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:54:04 GMT

What's happening?

I was to have finalized getting a flat today.

I called in to see a place on tuesday, and the person who was moving out was actually the girlfriend of a guy I was to be spending this year with if 2-bedroom apartments were cheaper. Now, I was told that the other guy in the flat was doing his exams, but given that I was a friend of her boyfriend's, she'd put me on the top of her list and I'd get to chat to the other guy on thursday just so that he's sure he gets along with me, and that I should get the place.

Skip forward to last night: I texted her to see what the story was, she said she was in Edinburgh, but she'd text the guy there.

Skip to today: as of the morning, no word from either of them; So I texted her in the afternoon to see what the story was; she said that she hadn't heard from him, and gave me his number. I called, texted, and phoned a few times. I texted her again, and she said that she left him a list of numbers to call, mine being on the top.

GAH!

I'm going to be in quite a situation with my current flatmates if this doesn't work out. I'm meant to be out by monday. I *really* hope that I'll be out by monday. If I'm not, that would be quite terrible.

Stuff the first.

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:25:54 GMT

A lady in the canteen today was quite a cunt.

I … wait… probably best not to write about it here … don’t want to get all worked up about ita gain.

But, if you are a lady, and were in the hamilton canteen today, then there’s a chance I might just be really angry at you for being such a fucking cunt.

stuff the second

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 17:21:08 GMT

Flat hunting sucks. I just can't take the rejection, the guy called Carlos was just, like, "sorry you're too young", and ... gah! I just can't take it.

They're all so bloody professional-biased. Damn fucker-bastards. Fuck them.

You can live on a box in the street if you want stephen, no trouble.

But...I don't know, maybe things will work out,....but it's so annoying I can't take the stress of these viewing-interviews.

I pray that this will not take more than three viewings.

GAH

Stephen

Three things I should blog about

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 16:23:44 GMT

thing the first: nasty cunt of a woman in the science canteen.
thing the second: flat hunting.
thing the third: peers who you are in absolute awe of.

but not now. Now, i must ring a guy called carlos to check out about a free room. tomorrow I will blog.

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:20:06 GMT

Google maps photos of katrina

have my cake and eat it

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 13:04:05 GMT

apparantly the italian analogue of "You can have your cake and eat it" goes like "You can have your barrel full and your wife drunk".

best of craigslist

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 13:49:53 GMT

Best of Craigslist is one of the funniest pages I've read in a very long time...

If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad is the mother of invention.

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 16:26:00 GMT

Generic Proverb Generator

I'm quite proud of it *proud*, despite the grammatical incompatibilities (which could be fixed, but I don't really want to put that much time into it).

Want to find the love of your life?

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:54:12 GMT

Want to find the love of your life? Well, to state the obvious: the first place to start looking on the net should not be silly dating sites, but missing persons lists!

National Centre for Missing Adults

Seriously, it would be a good deed if we were to root out some attractive missing people and reunite them with their families and make sweet sweet love to them.

If that fails, there's always the sex offenders registries.

Of course, there aren't so many of these websites catering to irish people, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time before we have an attractive missing persons website of our very own.

(insensitive? moi? never!)

confused sinn fein

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 11:56:27 GMT

quoting rob

"

Have a look at this. I’m not interested so much by the subject matter, as by the fact that
a) Sinn Fein has a human rights spokesperson
b) Sinn Fein: “We are against the exploitation of violence in any way”

Yes.

stirring the bucket

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 16:23:13 GMT

Came across this possibly provocative paragraph a few hours ago...

"But in the long run, for those who have been indoctrinated in a belief system that involves fairies or angels or a life everlasting dependent on a violation of physics, faith in a book and a deity and a church that stands against science over and over again, it is not possible to 'reason together,' for those so exposed have been damaged irreparably by their exposure. Reason is not possible, for at the heart of their sense of reason is a myth that disallows reason's findings, a myth that has been so tightly wound round one's hopes and fears and condition that to reject it is to reject all that is tied to it, to question all you've been told by those you've trusted and loved."
-Steve Champeon

I have to say that I have acquired a rather hefty skepticism over the past few weeks that has left me rather unable to confidently make any judgements.

application of all these IQ studies

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 10:11:45 GMT

I think if all these people looking for racial/gender IQ correlations get up their accuracy there could be a myriad of potential applications for their research.

Image: A not-so-distant future where, if you wanted to truly determine someone's racial heritage or gender you would not have to even look at them (or sample DNA if you're a bit like that), you'd just have to make them take an IQ test!

Support Love

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 19:40:44 GMT

Support love.

also: God Hates Shrimp

Palindromes

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 19:35:21 GMT

Anal sex at noon taxes Lana

Sex Alert: "Ella, my mallet relaxes!"

Egad! No bondage!

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 19:16:11 GMT

Me and You and Everyone We Know

I want to quote the film (Great film that it is), but I'll just quote a review

"Me and You and Everyone We Know contains moments of pure hilarity, weird creepiness, and lip-quivering tenderness. But even more than that, the film is filled with moments where you will be absolutely silent, absorbed in the fears, hopes, and secrets of its amazing characters. Characters who, like the audience, will hopefully discover their own means to poop back and forth forever."

from here

woo to maeritrae

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 14:31:51 GMT

woo to maeritrae for getting her claws (by her standards) into the hottest guy at the party last night!

cracked up

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 16:12:45 GMT

man this book is cracking me up... ("learning from las vegas", robert venturi, denise scott brown, and steven izenour.

You should note now that, in the book, below the quoted passage, is a photograph of a building in the shape of a duck.

When Modern architects righteously abandoned ornament on buildings, they unconsciously designed buildings that were ornament. In promoting Space and Articulation over symbolism and ornament, they distorted the whole building into a duck. They substituted for the innocent and inexpensive practive of applied decoration on a conventinoal shed the rather cynical and expensive distortion of program and structure to promote a duck. . . . It is now time to reevaluate the once-horrifying statement of John Ruskin that architecture is the decoration of construction, but we should append the warning of Pugin: It is all right to decorate construction but never construct decoration.

The author of the book then goes on, speaking of people who do really bad effects when making computers produce graphs, to say

"But at least a few computer graphics only evoke the response "isn't it remarkable that the computer can be programmed to draw like that?" instead of "My what interesting data.". The symptoms of the We-Used-A-Computer-To-Build-A-Duck Symdrome appear in this display from a professional journal:" [horrendous histogram depicted in book]

No more I promise :)

loving statistics

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 15:57:10 GMT

Andrew H. Malcolm, "Data-Loving Japanese Rejoice on Statistics Day," New York Times, Oct 28, 1977

...no nation ranks higher in its collective passion for statistics. In Japan, statistics are the subject of a holiday, local and national conventions, awards ceremonies and nationwide stastical collection and graph-drawing contexts. "This year," said Yoshiharu Takahashi, a Government statistician, "we had almost 30,000 entries. Actually, we had 29836."

Entries in the [children's] stastical graph contest were screened three times by judges, who gave first prize this year to the work of five 7-year-olds. Their graph creation, titled "Mom, play with us more often," was the result of a survey of 32 classmates on the frequency that mothers play with their offspring and the reasons given for not doing so.... Other children's work examined the frequency of family phone usage and correlated the day's demperature with cicada singing.

I like to quote myself

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 10:24:09 GMT

a view of the week, prepared in bite sized snippits for your pleasure.

"I was at home for the weekend trimmind hedges" (my arms now hurt)

"I have a graph that's all sort of wriggly, but I can't call it wriggly, or make reference to it's 'wiggles'." (on being cornered into using that Most Deplorable word: "varying").

" man...'Grainne Gollogly', what a minging name..." (it is!)

" I left my pants out to dry last night now they're smeared with bird-shit and soaking." (boo for the unexpected rain)

"oh lovely is the man who always closes with multiples of ten..." :)

"gah" (gnuplot troubles).

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:21:20 GMT

"When a boy's disgusting private goes inside of a girl's shameful unmentionable, there is a serious risk of it breaking off and causing excruciating pain while it travels throughout your body like a giant trichinosis worm."

Iron Hymen dot com

On Thomas Moore

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:01:13 GMT

".... Moore remained a popular writer for the rest of his life. He was awarded a Civil List pension in 1850. Moore died on February 25, 1852 in Wiltshire. He is still Ireland's national poet. His statue for some reasons was raised above Dublin's largest public urinal."

My Hometown

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 11:07:46 GMT

Courtesy of google maps:

http://tinyurl.com/aw7kd

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:56:33 GMT

I decided to look up letters on Google, and post what I came up first here.

(My computer's running code at the moment and there's nothing else I can think of doing because I feel slightly ill still).

A is for Apple
B is for B'Teselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
C is for C-SPAN
D is for D-Link
E is for E! Online
F is for F-Secure/
G is for Gmail
H is for H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online
I is for iTools
J is for Jennifer Lopez
K is for K Desktop Environment
L is for Council of Europe portal
M is for Texas A&M University
N is for SBC Knowledge Network Explorer: Blue Web'n Homepage
O is for oreilly.com -- Welcome to O'Reilly Media, Inc.
P is for PFLAG (Parents Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays)
Q is for Q4music.com - The World's Greatest Music Magazine Online
R is for The R Project for Statistical Computing
S is for McDonald's
T is for T-Mobile
U is for University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
V is for Channel [V]
W is for President George W. Bush
X is for X.Org
Y is for Yahoo! Messenger
Z is for Z Communications - The Spirit of Resistance Lives

open question to maeritrae: "fat tails" anyone?

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:24:32 GMT

maeritrae, did you ever find the delightful term "fat tail" a little, well, grotesque? Because I don't like the description...it...makes me writhe on the inside... .

Ooo, the geckos that one describes as having fat tails are really quite cute!

what I was actually looking for on google images was a picture of these "fat tails" that I am investigation, for those of you who want to recieve graphical tantalisation

thinking about sudoku

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 21:20:50 GMT

Maybe this is a bit technical for blogging, but it has two pretty pictures!

While I'm not overly fond of playing the game, I was thinking about su-do-ku today, finally got around to plotting some associated graphs, tis a lot of fun! I really want to figure out some of it's cohomology groups :)

I was just thinking about it for the simple 4x4 case, but I figure eveything'll thunk up to 9x9 without too much trouble.

Each point of the above graph represents eiter a row, a column, or one of the little 2x2 blocks - the four going down the middle represent the four rows (in the order they go down in), and the four goin across represent the four columns - the other four (that form a square if you join them up) on the diagonals (for want of a better term) represent the four 2x2 blocks. You connect two of the points if the sections of the grid the relate to intersect.

Given any solution, any map from the graph onto itself (that preserves the shape of the graph) corresponds to way of making a new solution from it - you get from this that you can rotate the board and that you can swap certain columns.

Gah...well, the 9x9 version of this generates 3359232 solutions, but in total there are 6670903752021072936960, so I'm stumped for now.

Oh yeah, here's the dual graph, just because I could ;)

But I don't think there's much good to come from that - I just wanted to know what it looked like :)

(woo yeah guess who installed a linux cad program today specifically for the purpose of thinking about sudoku;) )

edit (the next day):finished off stating the problem last night - if you look at the graph whos vertices are the image of *any* embeddings of {1,2,3,4} into the board, then you have the graph at the top embedded into it, and all other solutions can be got by other full embeddings (though not uniquely - but there are the same number of each). I feel happy, I haven't done any maths done in ages.