Self: Meet Center. Center: Meet Self.
pontiff | July 28, 2008Yesterday I started to trace the wiring for our doorbells and figure out why they aren't working (they haven't worked since we moved in.) So I'm happily tracing away (a bit difficult since part of the basement has been finished and hence obstructs me figuring out where the wires are going) and then, whah, why the heck does the doorbell wiring appear to be connected to the telephone system? Anyone seen something like this before or am I just going crazy? (Okay we know the answer to the last one.)
pontiff | July 28, 2008Last night we went to see the new Batman movie. After attempting to see it at Paul Allen's Cinerama (it was sold out), we headed down to the standard mall theater in downtown Seattle to view said film. Verdit for me: meh.
But what I found interesting was thinking about the reason for why I didn't much like the movie. This is obviously because I am not a bat nor a superhero nor a heroine nor do I live in Gotham. Plus the portrayal of Two Face just hit to close to home. See how easy it is, kids, to analyze movie reviews when you just take reviewers biases into account!
Monday's are…
pontiff | July 25, 2008Yesterday the New York Times, ran an article Absaroka, a proposed state between Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota which never was. Which reminded me of the state that I grew up in, the great state of Jefferson. What, you've never head of the great State of Jefferson?
The state of Jefferson was proposed in October of 1941 as a new state along the Oregon/California border, encompassing Curry, Josephine, Jackson, Klamath, Del Norte, Siskiyou, and Modoc counties. In short, the residents of this area where not to happy with the neglect they felt they were receiving from their respective state…
pontiff | July 15, 2008When people ask me about my iPhone, I usually tell them that it is a great gadget, but not really a terrific cell phone. I'm going to have to modify that a bit now, I think. With the addition of third party applications, the iPhone is now a super duper great gadget, but not really a terrific cell phone. Here are some of the free apps I've been loving (I haven't yet looked at the paid ones, cheapo that I am!)
Pandora Radio. Many of you already know Pandora Radio, a service wherein you enter favorite music and it produces a radio station based upon your preferences. The iPhone app for…
pontiff | July 14, 2008I recently rented a car and got dinged with a 13 dollar fee because I didn't drive 75 miles (and, did not see the tiny sign indicating the new rule that if I drove so little I would be rewarded by not having to fill up the fuel tank for a mere 13 dollars. Having a receipt could have gotten this fee waved.) My first thought on seeing this fee was wondering if they actually took their average mile per gallon for seventy five miles and set the fee so that at current fuel prices they would always make money on this? A sort of rental car arbitrage?
My second thought was, I wonder if they…
pontiff | July 6, 2008Red Eye:
A drink made from beer and tomato juice, drunk by Canadians
A kind of cicada.
Tomato ketchup. Or is it catsup?
A European fish, the rudd, Leuciscus erythrophthalmus. I was once a rudd, of a different kind.
What Dave will be doing tonight to get to the East coast. BINGO! From the OED:White House Diary 31 Mar. (1970) 642 Lynda was coming in on 'the red-eye special' from California, about 7 A.M., having kissed Chuck good-by at Camp Pendleton last night as he departed for Vietnam
Bonus points if you can guess who Lynda is. Double bonus if you can explain where the title of this post…
pontiff | June 20, 2008One of the most amusing things about writing a blog is that people you've never met form an impression about you from your blabberings, and then, often, when they actually meet you they are astounded that you aren't "an old grumpy guy" or whatever image they had in their mind. So, in order to confuse you even more, here are some things which I've been reading and thinking about and doing while not working on efficient quantum algorithms for the hidden subgroup problem.
Spanish Treasury to Exclude Italian Government Bonds. Could this be an indication of problems ahead for the Euro?…
pontiff | June 16, 2008I do believe this is the first time I've performed the paper dance on the scienceblogs incarnation of this blog. Yep, it's that time again: it's the paper dance!
"A far away light in the futuristic place we might be; It's a tiny world just big enough to support the kingdom of one knowledgeable; I feel a wave of loneliness and head back down I'm going too fast (I'm going too fast)"
arXiv:0806.2160The Stability of Quantum Concatenated Code HamiltoniansAuthors: D. Bacon
Abstract: Protecting quantum information from the detrimental effects of decoherence and lack of precise quantum control is a…
pontiff | June 9, 2008Today is the final exam for the course I've been teaching this summer. So I need some reading material for when I'm not watching the students take their exam. Here are two fun ones I just downloaded (one via Alea):
arXiv:0803.3913:The Reverse of The Law of Large Numbers
Authors: Kieran Kelly, Przemyslaw Repetowicz, Seosamh macReamoinn
Abstract:The Law of Large Numbers tells us that as the sample size (N) is increased, the sample mean converges on the population mean, provided that the latter exists. In this paper, we investigate the opposite effect: keeping the sample size fixed while…
pontiff | May 27, 2008I am now the sum of the first four positive factorials of positive numbers!
The most depressing thing about the age of thirty three was that Alexander the Great died at 33. Dude, to be 33 and not have people putting "the Great" after your name is super depressing.
pontiff | May 20, 2008is realizing that you've spent twenty straight hours working on a grant proposal. Fry, meet Brain. Brain, meet Fry.
pontiff | April 25, 2008Bill Gates, in his transition from Mr. Big at Microsoft, to Mr. Big at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, has been going around to various college campuses and given a talk "Bill Unplugged." You can watch the video here if you are so inclined.
Notes from the talk.
First of all no one asked the question I wanted him to answer: how is he going to commute to work. You see Gates' house is on the "east side" which is separated from Seattle by floating bridges (I kid you not.) The commute across these bridges, is, well, lets just say, not the most pleasant experience. The new offices for…
pontiff | April 22, 2008Over at Machine Learning (Theory), the Learner points to a Scientific American article on Science 2.0 which discusses various efforts in bringing scientists into the 21st century, and scientists reluctance to openly discuss their research in progress in public forums. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I started blogging about my own research. First of all, I'm pretty sure it would bore a large number of people into a deep comatose sleep from which they would never emerge. On the other hand, I'm not a very smart guy, so exposing my work to the vast power of the intertube's collective…
pontiff | April 21, 2008Friday I gave out a survey in the course I'm teaching this quarter asking for feedback. Among the many helpful responses, was one, which pointed out that I say "so" a lot. Now, I know that when I write I use "now" a lot, but I really hadn't noticed how much I say "so." In class today I realized that there were places where I couldn't even proceed without saying "so." So this is a post to remind myself to try harder to figure out how to not say "so." Its not so easy, I must say.
pontiff | April 17, 2008You know you are spoiled when the place to put your beer is the top of the dugout:
So close, the kid next to me waved at Ichiro as he returned to dugout and Ichiro waved back. Oh, and the guy with the two foot tall Ichiro bobble head doll was kind of scary.
pontiff | April 17, 2008A word I accidentally mumbled in class: "crudimentary." I think it means both rudimentary and crude. Anyway, I like it, and am going to try to start weaseling it into as many talks as I possibly can. Speaking of which, here are slides for a guest lecture I gave to the local alternative models of computing class at UW.
pontiff | April 15, 2008One year ago:
Today: still playing on the floor with the kiddies and loving it!