.dot.dot.all

The Super Present-Selector, Part 2: Variables

2011-12-21T23:00:00.016+01:00

To follow up Part 1, which I realise it might make the people involved sound like terribly ungrateful kiddies:
Well, he is really ungrateful and difficult!
- J/K. But no, seriously, he is really picky. Some help is needed. And choosing Christmas presents is probably not the most important thing in the world, but it's the type of problem that we have here that interests me, rather than its magnitude.

How has all of this gone down so far?

Obviously, I mentioned this project to my "boyf", to get a bit of feedback.

He isn't totally keen. He doesn't like the idea that we (our thoughts? opinions? judgement?) might be reduced to a formula where the values of pre-decided variables are simply plugged in to give a yes/no (or percentage, whatever) outcome.

He apparently doesn't realise that this is what I've been doing in an informal way already, for the last two years we've been living together, in my efforts to procure furnishings, clothes and kitchen utensils that he doesn't turn his nose up at.

I know what he means. How could we possibly take into account the interaction of all of the variables, in, I don't know, a lampshade -- its size and shape and level of shininess, which in that particular colour renders it just the perfect level of kitsch to be acceptable, whereas something-very-similar-but-slightly-different would be raté.

Maybe we can't -- that's the whole question.

An important point: These variables are not picked automatically. It would actually be so much more elegant, beautiful, perfect, if they were. But I don't have a machine that I can just give a duvet cover to and it'll examine it and pick out variables I would never have even thought of using: size of inside hems; width of stitching; whether the factory that made it is in Turkey or Bangladesh. That kind of machine doesn't yet exist.
Ideally, I would think of as many as possible of these variables myself -- as many as possible! even the seemingly irrelevant ones! -- but with the real-world constraints of time, manpower, and not-going-absolutely-crazy-ness, that's not going to happen either.

This means that there is already some human, non-automatic intervention involved - I'll have to pick out the variables I think might be likely candidates. The machine's just going to remember the values of all of them a lot better than I would be able to, and hopefully find some patterns that I might not have spotted.

I'm calling it a "machine" because I think that's a lot more parlant for non-specialists, but what we're basically talking about here is an algorithm. Or, in fact, a comparison of different algorithms -- it was a class assignment to experiment with the data-mining software Weka that inspired me to actually think about turning this into a project.

Weka has a whole bunch of algorithms you can play around with and try out on your data sets, to find out which might be the most suitable for a classification task such as "Good present or not good present?". One I'm particularly excited about using is "Decision Tree" - it'll make an actual decision tree from your pre-classified data! I think that's pretty cool.

So, why hot water bottles covers?

Gripping stuff.
Before I get stuck into comparing things like pairs of boots (what am I gonna do, measure the angle of the toe?) I thought I'd better start with something "simple" - that is, with easy-to-measure relevant variables.

Some ideas I had: t-shirts? (still a bit complicated), duvet covers, paper folders... basically, something where at least one of the major factors (eg. shape) is fairly limited in variability.

In fact, I think hot water bottle covers is still not ideal for my first experiment run -- I'll explain why in an upcoming post (spoiler: it's about pattern). I have the next two days to choose which product I actually want to try this out with and get a load of examples of it, before I go off to the land of no internet connection.

The method

The basic plan is to give a list of products (pictures) to the choosy-person (who I'm going to start calling "Subject A"), and ask them to class them as "yes/no" depending on whether they like them or not. I'm thinking, let's keep this binary for the moment. We can always try something more fine-graded later.

Whether or not they will see some of the variables (price, brand, etc.) is something I haven't decided on. There are obvious psychological implications to this. At the same time, these are "realistic" - they are variables that we're aware of when we're making our own shopping choices. This is a question to come back to later.

The next week or so will be prime data-collection time: a few days in a house with not much else to do than ~~eat and drink till bursting, go to mass, open presents~~ play with data.

In fact, it'll be a few days in a house with members of Subject A's immediate family, which means: more data collection!

I could: ask Subject A's sister what her judgement of his preferences is (i.e. does she think he would like/not like each item). That way, I can have something to compare the machine's performance to: ok, it's 60% accurate, but is that better than a mother's judgement? A brother's? A girlfriend's?

Teaching/Learning

In the first post I mentioned two different projects: machine learning (using the data on someone's past choices to work out an algorithm equivalent to their decision process) and machine-aided human learning (using this data and algorithm to help another person learn someone's taste).

Since the second of these involves all sorts of pedagogical questions (what would be the best way to do this exercise? Would it be better to be consciously aware of the variables involved, or not?) that's something I'm going to leave aside for now. Basically: let's make the algorithm to represent preferences for now, and if it can be useful for human-learning later, that's something else.

The Super Present-Selector, Part 1: Background

2011-12-21T18:22:00.005+01:00

I'm in the process of constructing a machine I'm provisionally titling the Super Present Selector. I thought I'd blog as I go along. Firstly, some background: What is it? How did this come about?

Because my mum wants to know what to get me for Christmas. Because my mum wants to know what to get my boyfriend for Christmas.

Because my mum has a department store voucher that needs using up, and suggests buying me clothes with it. Because I think this is a terrible idea.

Because she asks: "Any kind not to get? Any colours not to choose? Plain colours or stripes? Smart or casual? If dresses or skirts, short, mid or long? Fitted or flared?"

Because I draft an email reply advising her strongly against the idea, but add in, just in case (because I fear I'm not too good at the advising strongly thing): "work stuff: size 8-10, like most shades of grey, skinny trousers but muscular calves make this difficult, don't like most stripes I've seen in the shops lately, never get anything from Jane Norman I'm pretty sure it's made for curvy people".

Because I don't send that email because I'm worried I sound like a dick, and I'm still not sure those rules are watertight enough. I just tell her on the phone that that homeware department (where they sell overpriced bottles of fancy alcohol) is a much safer bet.

Because she asks again what to get for my boyfriend.

Because I could have taken one look and told her that the hot water bottle with a striped cover she got him last year was not going to be a favourite, but I can't find the words to explain exactly why.

Because I am definitely *for* the idea of getting people surprise gifts (surely it's not really a gift if you choose it yourself? they just pay for it, is all, and choosing presents is half of the fun), and anyway I don't have time to go picking out presents, but it would be a shame for someone else to spend money and goodwill on things that won't be appreciated.

Because, actually, maybe I could find the words to explain the problem with the hot water bottle cover: it's stripes, of different colours and thicknessess, making up the kind of design you see in high-street home furnishings when they do their version of "minimalist" or "modern" (see also). "Bright modern stripes". And although the polyester-lined fleece material is one of the most insulating I've seen in bottle-cover technology, the aesthetic considerations here come up trumps. But how can I tell her all this without, simply, saying "it's ugly" or "he'll think it's ugly"?

And actually this other one, striped in simple pink and white, which I've just found on the website of the same shop, would have been easily more successful.

What could possibly be a solution to all this heartbreak and confusion and timewasting?

Obviously: A Super Present-Selector. A machine that contains all the rules affecting present-pleasing probability. A machine into which candidate items can be plugged, (so my Mum can go out shopping, and this "ooh that looks nice, I wonder whether X would like it...") and the machine will say: "This item contains colours of more that 3.6 points* of chromatic difference, in a stripe-formation of varying widths. This item is from shop Y, and is NOT from the range "classic". Other users have tagged this design as "bright modern stripes". The probability of this item bringing pleasure and joy to person X is: 13%"
*This is a scale I just made up

And in this situation, because my Mum is not a massive risk-taker, she would probably put the item down. Even better: because she is quite diligent and careful and because she likes finding out how things work she would probably continue through the shop, plugging in other interesting-looking items to see the results. She might even start systematically plugging in *all* the items in the shop, in order to work out for herself what the machine's rules are. And then, maybe, she will learn and internalise all of these rules herself and she won't even need the machine any more: she will have "learnt" what this difficult-to-please person's tastes in home furnishings are.

Wouldn't that be amazing?

So, that's what the idea of the Super Present Selector is.

Part 2: Variables

and...

2011-09-11T01:22:00.008+02:00

sometimes it's that time of the month/life/year when we just want to get a blanket and make dens and look at children's book pictures.

"The Three Robbers" by Tomi Ungerer
Narrated by Gene Dietch

Recent Obsessions

2011-07-25T22:27:00.016+02:00

Phone HACKING

2011-07-23T10:41:00.005+02:00

OK.

I was totally going to write a post about the whole phone hacking frenzy, and how naming the action of accessing a voicemail box hacking is something like calling two nine-year-olds caught shoplifting a 'heist'.

It was a bit long and nit-picking, and I realised that it sounded like I had the worst inferiority complex, and- y'know, I do have some other stuff to do.

Happily, Doghouse Diaries have taken care of it and I can sleep at night.

(edit)

On a similar note, xkcd:

Take it all

2011-05-27T11:23:00.012+02:00

Who's never made the mistake of talking all pro-social 'til the tax bill comes in?

I have no idea whether Adele has previously professed any political leanings one way or another. Maybe she's a Tory! It happens.

More worthy of public outcry I feel (almost) : since when did 'mortified' mean 'outraged' rather than acutely embarrassed?

(or dead)

The Guardian feels the need to add/change a couple of words to adapt the quote to print, but nothing on this. Can one say "sic" for lexical rather than syntactic/orthographic error? I'm now curious.

Harold Camping

2011-05-27T00:01:00.021+02:00

I feel pretty happy

just that he's around, to share with us.

You always used to hear about those 'End of the World is Nigh' street preachers in old Monty Python sketches, but I'd never seen one in real life.

Now I still haven't, but I've seen enough on TV to really believe that it's more than just one guy on a soap box in Hyde Park.

And for that I'm glad.

OK, I'm pretty sure everyone I know voted Yes, so...

2011-05-07T00:50:00.001+02:00

*moment of realisation that my circle of acquaintances is not representative of the electorate*

CGPGrey explains life

2011-05-05T19:28:00.004+02:00

I think my only question after this is: Who is this American guy, and how is he teaching me so much I didn't know about Britain?

Best of AV Explanatory Vids

2011-05-05T18:47:00.005+02:00

I'm not doing ANYTHING useful. I may as well blog.

Most complete:

The Jungle Kingdom analogy

Most real-life:

The coffee/beer analogy

Most background info:

The sensible video with pictures of ballot papers and stuff

Cutest:

Is your cat just sitting around dazed and confused?

5 out of 10 news headlines need quote-mark libel-protection

2010-09-09T08:15:00.004+02:00

What I learned today

2010-01-10T19:53:00.003+01:00

The Beefeaters are actually some kind of gang, involved in underhand money-making, drugs and intimidation

Google Street View

2009-11-03T23:21:00.010+01:00

Rue Saunier, Toulon, France

26 Little St SE. Atlanta, Georgia

Berwick Rd. Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

308 SW Rose Garden Way, Portland, Oregon

58 Lungomare 9 Maggio, Bari, Puglia, Italy

51 E. Claremont St. Edinburgh, Scotland

From Jon Rafman on Art Fag City. I think I came from something about Michael Wolf, who you can read more about here and here.

MYO New Yorker cartoon

2009-11-03T00:59:00.009+01:00

Make your own New Yorker cartoon with The New Yorker Cartoon Kit.
Mine will be my facebook profile picture and then people will ask me or just themselves why I have replaced my face with something that is not funny beautiful meaningful or my face and I will have no real answer. That is the plan. Also maybe win a trip to New York, that would be pretty sweet.

Joe Moran

2009-10-19T13:23:00.013+02:00

Slightly depressing satire-fail, reading through the comments section on Joe Moran's recent CiF post 'Society for Unread Authors'.

Anyways... Made me wonder who he was and that, and in perusing his blog came across this article about life and the meaning of twitter.

Pretty good. Presents some ideas about limitations to the value of nearer-instantaneous communications (and interaction v broadcast) other than the usual 'verbal diarrhoea' argument.

It does have a bit of unnecessary wrap-up at the end, but it would still be a great article if broke off on the paragraph ending,

"We could spend our whole lives texting but there will always be part of us that is infinitely remote."

music videos with (semi) naked people / keith scholfield

2009-10-09T16:54:00.009+02:00

unconscious suggestion / derren brown

2009-10-06T01:29:00.011+02:00

So Derren Brown comes across as a bit of a prick. That lottery thing - what was the point?

Some of his other stuff, though, is annoyingly impressive.

This is pretty good:
Subliminal Advertising
(embedding disabled)

Psych? Magic? I guess it'll be about 30 years til some secrets come out, if the former cameramen get desperate enough for cash to do some retrospective documentary or something.

In the meantime, this is a pretty good article on unconscious influences.(pdf)
[from The Psychologist - A research journal "in a form suitable for our wide-ranging non-specialist audience" (ie. pop psychology that's not bullshit)]

Just seen there's another one, with guys from Saatchi&Saatchi.
American Version

tender is the psych

2009-10-06T01:27:00.005+02:00

F Scott Fitzgerald

Just finished The Great Gatsby.

Not read Tender is the Night, but like the fact that someone's done a bit of a psych-filtered analysis. And a bit of an insight into Fitzgerald.

From The Psychologist.

ethical offsetting?

2009-10-03T01:44:00.010+02:00

Could I somehow offset my narcissistic fixations/admirations/desires for the disposable bread of capitalism (clothes and that) by just showing some kind of awareness of the back of the picture?

I guess probably not.

..pics from adbusters.

College Humour

2009-09-27T00:27:00.003+02:00

4 Awkward Moments in Facebook "Likes"

more xkcd

2009-09-21T11:37:00.004+02:00

but, i really like this one... ("I am so excited about the Kepler mission. This is the second most important thing our species has ever done, right behind inventing the concept of delivery pizza.")

Hiiiiiiii

2009-08-28T16:13:00.003+02:00

not had time to blog lately, ok, noone cares, but i'm just gonna post stuff now that was in draft or lying around, and backdate it. just so you know. there.

tech secrets revealed

2009-08-26T17:14:00.002+02:00

http://www.xkcd.com/627/

update - Witches of Eastwick, True Blood

2009-07-25T17:10:00.009+02:00

Just finished The Witches of Eastwick.

Wasn't sure what the point of Updike would be if it's not realistic small-town America, but actually found the heightened awareness of it as a fable meant appreciating more consciously the actual craft of his fiction (I'm gonna admit, something, somewhere inside of me, just wanted to assume Rabbit was straight-up documentary) - he's pretty good.

Back to Rabbit Redux now, maybe from a bit of a different angle.

Just watched the first episode of True Blood. It seems weak. However compelling it is to watch a blonde waitress with psychic powers that somehow turn her into a caricature of naivety rather than jaded and manipulative (I'm guessing the grandmother is something to do with that), that scene in the forest particularly killed it for me. the one with the confrontation with the potential vampire-drainers - kind of important, plot-wise. a hinging point. there needs to be this confrontation, and it needs to be resolved in a certain way, and that way is that Sookie and Bill temporarily defeat the drainers - with Sookie playing the main part in saving Bill's life - yet it still needs to be left open for retaliations or follow-ups later.

but the guy gets strangled by the chain in some not entirely clear way, the both of them look scared and give up and stumble off (with the obligatory "we'll be back"-type comments)... then do a bit of a wheel-skid in their truck. just to scare a little. could they not have just run them over?!

cheese or cliché is fair enough, but can it still not be a little tighter?

didn't Buffy do this better? (I'm actually not sure, just wondering)

half nelson

2009-07-16T00:05:00.016+02:00

one reason i'm shit at reviewing* is that i feel quite a bit more comfortable criticising than appreciating.

this means that i could easily spend more time talking about things i don't think are worth any time than things i do, a contradiction that could almost cause me to combust if it really came to fruition and wasn't, as it is, held back by this other problem - that my criticisms, being relative to some ideal or supposed standard as if people had stood up and claimed that this work they'd just made was the greatest thing ever, or this, or that, which is generally not the case at all, end up seeming not worth much anyways.

Half Nelson basically runs through a tree of american indie tropes - school classrooms can be inspiring places as the kids are ultimately motivated but just waiting for the right teacher; black people are still ghetto but have strong families ; white people are still upset that their parents don't understand them; middle-class people can be fucked-up too, the most cool-looking people are the most fucked-up internally; life is a bit shit but human nature is beautiful and actually so is life really; fucked-up people, as well as being the most physically attractive, are also most likely to be associated with intelligent-looking stuff like some kind of fantasy maverick history lecture (for 12yr olds?), or a children's picture book on dialectics...

but it is lovely. nice music, nice colours.

*other reasons are that i'm just a bit shit, at thinking, and writing.

fantasy job of the month: 'something in advertising'

2009-06-21T15:55:00.006+02:00

copywriter, maybe. or something similar.
(last month: magazine journalist. see the progression?)

just read how to get your first job in advertising by this Dave Trott, who's apparently quite well-known and that, and I feel like I could do it. Just need some kind of portfolio it seems. Just knocking one up of imaginary adverts that you'd imaginarily do - isn't that a bit GCSE? is that normal? Could totally do that though. It would be fun. And a better use of my time than wandering around blogs.

this is never actually gonna happen.

Concept Mining

2009-06-07T15:19:00.010+02:00

Here

About as promising then disappointing as this dinosaur comic.

In the way that I'd love there to be NLP-related jokes that are really funny, it would also be amazing for there to be a breakthrough, effective, text-mining solution.

But whilst tech webcomics might someday hit on a decent pun, it's harder to see how this kind of thesaurus-inspired NLP is going to get around one of the very issues inherent in thesauri - the artificial formalising, breaking things up into this tree structure. Yes, in the predecessor it's necessary - how else would you organise things in a book? But is this really how we think, or just the closest possible model?

Ok, in translating something to computation, it needs to be formalised. But what's the point, really, in just continuing with this line of thinking?

And ok, I don't have any better ideas. But I'll work on the text mining jokes.

I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew.

2009-05-23T04:23:00.003+02:00

600 person-strong Amazon review joke (ok I nicked this off some other blog but don't remember where now)

..ok just realised this might be quite a well-known 'viral' (but how well-known? how would we know? can someone not make an accurate chart of these things?! tracking cookies must be useful for something) there's a milk one too. the magic is now broken slightly. but i think the shirt still stands up on its own.

i think i should get a dog

2009-05-23T02:02:00.000+02:00

paragraphs 2 - 4 -- appreciation

- not voodoo

fiction fiction fiction fiction cultural outreach program?

2009-05-22T13:54:00.000+02:00

New Yorker Fiction Podcasts

I wanted to title this 'best-kept fiction secret*' with the asterisk conceding that it likely isn't much of a secret to anyone Stateside, or maybe just anyone outside of Jersey CI. But what was drawing me to such an uninspired phrase, a cliché even inaccurate? Hard to say. And I'm gonna blame it on island uninspiration in general. shiiiiit.

But this really is some kind of cross-atlantic -thrown lifebuoy, a voice over the airwaves, a beacon of if not hope then at least some kind of entertainment

Each week some (generally younger) New Yorker-published author chooses, reads and discusses a piece of short fiction from another (generally older) New Yorker-published author. There's Updike, Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borgess, loads of other people I haven't heard of but probably should have...

quite liked Jean Stafford - Children Are Bored on Sundays. 'Invalid Souls'.

I could make more of a list. I haven't listened to them all yet. I can come back.

jus sayin'

2009-05-22T01:29:00.000+02:00

i know this looks a bit shit.... i'll get around to it, sometime. any suggestions appreciated.

radio on the tv

2009-05-20T23:00:00.004+02:00

(this was in drafts from ages ago, so just thought I'd post it anyway)
not actually related to Tom's coincidentally recent TAL post (yeah i hear google likes superfluous linking)

This American Life TV shows *

I don't feel too guilty about watching this on streaming as it seems near enough impossible to buy on iTunes if you're in the UK. I wasn't sure if I was just being a retard so I've been trying anyways long enough to whet my appetite some - and the one I'd been most particularly looking forward to, just from the summaries, was 'behind the camera'.

instead of making tv in a TAL-style, this literally does just seem 'radio on the TV' - the images don't seem to add that much. I'm not sure what I was expecting. More stunts and explosions?

maybe just a more naturalistic, exposing, documentary-style. something taking more advantage of the visual... we don't need so much dialogue. we can just watch stuff.**

* yeah the sound is out of sync on these but hey, close your eyes and you can pretend it's radio again. or you can pretend that the rules of the universe have both inversed and exaggerated, and sound now travels significantly faster than light. y'know, whichever's easiest.

**to be fair, this might be quite related to the out-of-synch thing.

'scary' brain science

2009-05-05T23:31:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I read psych/science stuff and it seems a bit weird or implausible, but I just assume that either I've forgotten to the point of incomprehension most of contents of my degree course already, or the field has really moved on in the last... 9 months.
Whilst the former is likely enough still true, it's at least slightly comforting that the ever-reliable Mind Hacks blog is around to confirm that often the case is just lazy/ill-informed journalism.

Dressing-down of Sunday Times article

(oh.... just realised I left a comment on the article, where I sound like a bit of a twat, and now I'm sharing the article link around..... (realised as in just connected these two things together... ok, well, whatever))

citation jarres

2009-05-05T22:31:00.000+02:00

Story: Student (subject and level undefined) inserts fake information into Wikipedia and is thus, by searching on this information, able to see exactly which publications use Wikipedia as a primary, unverified, source.
The execution is commendable: a compelling but fairly plausible, inoffensive, quote inserted into the biography of a relatively low-profile, if obituary-worthy, composer - a prime target for frantic internet searching from same-day deadline journalists.

If the guy who did this (one Shane Fitzgerald) has a blog I can't find it. It would be interesting to see a list of major publictions that used the quote - I kinda feel like blogs don't count, and so far I've found The Guardian (who brought the story to public attention and so covered their backs slightly, and have since changed the original article) and The Independent (who haven't at all covered their tracks).

The guy emailed them all a month later to explain what he'd done, so I'm guessing other publications may have since done an edit. Or they didn't use the quote. Who knows. But this was a pretty good way of trying to find out.

John Updike - Rabbit, Run

2009-04-27T08:14:00.000+02:00

Everything else was seeming contrived and this doesn't. That is to say - just that it's well done. It's small-town America and modern anxiety; how did we get here? what are we doing? Link (Amazon Sample)

Corinne

2009-04-16T00:49:00.001+02:00

ok more salinger. I dunno what it is. sometimes he seems simple, almost clumsy, but by the end I needed a cigarette afterwards.

The Inverted Forest Originally published in Cosmopolitan, December 1947.

hubdub - buy shares in the news

2009-04-14T02:12:00.001+02:00

seems like an interesting way of engaging with the world / dummy practice for market trading

hubdub

things I'm out the loop with - billboard advertising

2009-04-13T18:40:00.002+02:00

originals and make-your-own

flickr pool

loop, wire, noose?

2009-04-13T18:36:00.000+02:00

'cyburia' and war games 2.0

£2.69

2009-03-22T13:16:00.000+01:00

For me, this feels like part of an internet fairy-tale.

docu-info-narratives / Burn on Goody

2009-03-10T07:10:00.000+01:00

I'll admit - I was actually just going to steal all the references from this, hunt them down, and make some kind of Norman Mailer/Jade Goody mash-up* *(not got a better word) but actually, I can't find the Mailer text I wanted. So there's that. The problem of which at least left me the time for reflection, and to read the rest of the article. and come around to the fact that I should be doing better things than stealing people's ideas to make really second-rate covers. i dunno, basking in the sunshine or something. or writing my essay. article here I remember hearing something about Burn's book on the radio. it sounded a bit shit. i don't know whether it is. so anyways, here's some other mailer. I haven't read it. I've been being sleep-deprived and not writing my essay.

some thoughts

2009-03-05T07:13:00.007+01:00

With girls, they're terrible. They can be terrible. I was in the school library, one time, now was a few years ago, I was in the libary, and there were these girls they were revising for their GCSEs, and this girl she was a stroppy kind of a girl, she said it's hot in here, and she took her shirt off - - yes she had something underneath, that - - so the librarian had to come, she had to come and she - - yes, cause I was there, and -

I went for this job, I just had this tryout, like I went along, but it was this bunch of 4 year olds, like 15 of them. and you have to do everything with them. you have to ask them if they need the toilet before you start the class, and you have to take them to the toilet, and at the end you get all their coats, and make sure they put their coats on, the arms, I mean, I've never even had a kid brother or a cousin or anything, I have no idea, like, everything. and you're just in this classroom, the middle of nowhere, eight at night,

and I came back, and I'd been away, and they didn't know where I'd gone, and they came up and hugged me! they came up and hugged me, and they said, Miss Helen Miss Helen, at some schools you know, sometimes they're funny with that, but they're ok, they with the principle too, but you notice, if they come and hug her that's ok, but she would never initiate it. never initiate it. but she comes up and she hugs me and she says, Miss Helen! I've moved up TWO reading levels! Some teachers, they don't even like kids. Some teachers, before they go in the classrom they -

I'm not even sure I like people

...you know, you can't let them get to you. they can just tear you apart -

...

some unrelated things

2009-02-28T02:20:00.000+01:00

( ...)

oh, i was just looking for advice on reducing cassette noise but now i realise that was actually an embodied metaphor for my life

st malo

2009-02-24T17:40:00.000+01:00

cheap leather suitcase made in Korea makes me feel like Graham Greene

(this is complete projection, I don't even know Graham Greene that well)

secrets from the pre-drafting

2009-02-10T01:08:00.000+01:00

new favourite hobby: stalking authors online to track down pre-final versions of their work, for that elusive glimpse behind the magician's cloth - just like back in A-level English.

Amazon Read-Inside gives you the first 7 pages of Shared Patio, the opening story in No One Belongs Here More Than You, by Miranda July.

To be honest, I don't really know who she is any more than happening to catch something on arte, a kind of docu-date with David Shrigley, in Paris, with both seeming as kind of awkward in the situation as you would imagine they would be, though Miranda maybe less so.

After Amazon leaves you tantalisingly before the crux, you can find the rest here... play spot the changes, if you're that way inclined.

She does that kind of sunnily misfit over an awkward, almost anal, introverteness -type of kooky american indie, and you might have heard of her from directing Me and You and Everyone We Know, which is another one to add to the list of films I haven't seen.

and she has a couple of cute ideas for websites.

(today is also a day for gratuitous hyperlinking)

New Favourite Magazine

2009-02-06T15:32:00.000+01:00

I think The Believer might be a bit like daytrotter for literature. Well, not at all really. Not in terms of custom graphics, or writing mostly on the up-and-coming, or inviting the featured artists to come and make something in-house each time. It's just reviews and interviews. But in the sense I wanted to mean it, which is looking at great stuff from a kinda-indie aesthetic, from a kinda left-of-sideways point of view leading to long riffs taking the personal as universally metaphorical, like this musing on John Updike by John Freeman. (I don't know who either John is right now, but I might go check them out)

I came across via The Guardian recommending this interview with David Simon of The Wire, interviewed by Nick Hornby. And David Simon knows who Nick Hornby is, and everything. (Of course he knows Nick Hornby! He still reads books, doesn't he? But if you, at 15, were so stoked to 'discover' High Fidelity, sometimes it's just some kinda strange that other people like David Simon can be familiar enough to casually drop in references ("three chords and the right guitar solo..." - I'm pretty sure that's just lifted right out) as well)
More importantly, anyways, it includes a quick guide to recognising Dickensian/Shakespearean/Ancient Greek literary styles, and their respective influences on some pop culture elements.
I learnt stuff, and that.

le grand content

2009-01-29T06:44:00.000+01:00

we all love indexed (right?)

bit of visual representation to get things in perspective.

maths geeks

2009-01-29T06:00:00.006+01:00

Thought This American Life #88 - Numbers merited a mention for touching on the possible psychology behind a desire for formalised representation, though just treating it as something 'unemotional' is kinda one-dimensional.

for all your satirical needs

2009-01-24T18:45:00.000+01:00

this handy chart (from wired.com)

blinkered and happy, but still hopeful

2009-01-23T17:26:00.000+01:00

article in The Economist the other day looking at the interrelating effects of competition and bias in the media.

I'm sometimes left pondering the fact that I love The Guardian so much even though in the main it only reinforces my views and opinions - this comfort pleasant, but is this the reason we read the news?
well... if you replace 'follow the news' with 'consume the news media' then it's a lot easier agree that pretty much so, yeah.

anyways, so the study this was looking at is particularly notable for its relatively simple but kinda innovative use of natural language processing to extract information (first processing transcripts of Congress to identify partisan phrases, then measuring their occurrence in newspaper dialog - the innovation being that even relatively subtle differences can be objectively, effectively, used in this way to identify rhetoric)

the conclusion drawn - that it is exactly the slant that each media has that leads to its profitability - is not astounding, but it is interesting that apparently even small deviations from this optimal slant have observable effects on circulation. also new to me is the finding that there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between the slant and the newspaper's ownership - being totally market-targeted does make sense, but it's still at least a little surprising.
ok, so this kind of capitalist democracy of information is naturally blinkered in each individual instance, but as they say better than I do in pointing out the advantages:

None of this is particularly helpful to seekers of the unvarnished truth. These conscientious sorts still have to find the time to read lots of newspapers to get an unbiased picture of the world. But by serving demand from a variety of political niches, competition does allow for different points of view to be represented.

(we knew most of this already, right? but it's nice that someone's done some stats on it)

genre-mapping venn

2009-01-23T15:51:00.007+01:00

almost forgot, I went along for one night of the trans musicales de rennes festival and it was pretty good times.

almost as excitingly, though, at 3 in the morning burger-time, is finding this (pdf) being used as table place-mats.

I wouldn't do her either, but.

2009-01-18T02:16:00.000+01:00

( ^ Repulsive, but still) Bit of an article on media sexism ..can't say I paid much attention til recently, with the whole presidential race and the amount of sex/attractiveness/womanliness-judgement comments thrown at the candidates going past the point of irony. ok, this is not going to go anywhere near a discussion of inherent gender differences, arguably innate perception and still quite relevant character judgements... but still. there were just so. many. better. reasons. to criticise Palin or Clinton than ones relative to our ideas of femininity. why do more male writers not get called out as being vapid when they come out with those kinda things? not that female journalists get it thrown at them too much either... umm.... update: women/media/perception of relationships ..but I'm hoping that the slights at Will Young (handbag / 'vanilla sex' - c'mon, everyone says vanilla these days, and I didn't know it came from that...) are some kinda irony. or is she just trying to even the balance? not sure this is the way to go about it. ok, I'm not gonna talk about sexism again. for a while.

any song, any time

2009-01-13T03:57:00.000+01:00

http://www.justhearit.com/ appears to be some kind of searching conglomeration of youtube, and.... I'm guessing mp3 blogs. except apparently they've paid up all the licence fees. weirdly enough, it doesn't have random stuff that's very unlikely to be on the internet, and other stupid questions i think of asking it... but it does have Flotation Toy Warning... and it seems to be crawling myspace too.. ...which makes it different from Deezer in that they're not actually hosting the content - probably not a bad idea. unfortunately, it does fall into the Deezer preference of a flash-only interface - which I maybe don't hate as strongly as this guy, but kinda, all the same.

ASCII spy..... half a post

2009-01-13T02:18:00.001+01:00

Y'know, happens sometimes, you've got some contraband data you want to sneak out and spread worldwide, but under the radar, as it were. More importantly, wouldn't it be nice if this could just... be presented nicely, too? Is that too much to ask? These things make such a difference... We all already know and love ASCII art (right?) but most generator-type programs just populate the field with a bunch of random characters. This, new from Vincent Chu on googleapps will encode the data file of your choice (albeit at present with size restrictions) into an image, for example: ....this would be a lot better in every way if I hadn't been foiled by blogspot's stylesheets of course overiding any I tried to put in (to make text really really small, to render the image) ....I haven't been able to think of a straightforward way to do this ....something to come back to, maybe. (there was a hidden encoded file and everything!)

Une Attrape-Salinger

2009-01-04T14:56:00.001+01:00

Unrelated to anything, except maybe as a late Christmas present (though kinda wrecking my ideas about this maybe being an employment recruitment-friendly blog by pointing to what I'm guessing is copyright-dubious material), stumbled upon what looks to be the complete published short-story works of JD Salinger. Covering 1940 - 1965, Catcher in the Rye's there, too, if you reckon you can handle reading the whole book from the screen.

25 years is a short while, out in the world as well as in somebody's life, and it's pretty cool to be able to see not just his development as a writer -- technically, as well as in his perspective -- but also the wider social themes and fashions in social interaction; and in-between a few different first-person characters, one voice coming through now and again with the kind of over-thinking under a cover of casualness instantly recognisable in its similarity to Holden Caulfield. Which is one of the most pleasant, most comforting voices I know. If you've read Catcher, one in particular - This Sandwich Has No Mayonaise - is bittersweet.

Some other favourites so far:

The Long Debut of Lois Taggett

The Heart of a Broken Story

(later edit - forget the others, this one especially: ) For Esme, with Love and Squalor

festive fun

2008-12-29T01:19:00.004+01:00

Well, games. Ok, quizzes.

Obviously no match for board games, but maybe jigsaw puzzles.

Can you tell arial from helvetica?

What's your colour IQ?

(i was ok on the first and pretty rubbish on the second)

last.fm/user/iced_scream

2008-12-24T00:25:00.000+01:00

not totally feeling the lists thing right at the moment but seems to be end-of-year-appropriate.

Keith Tyson - History Paintings

2008-12-22T17:47:00.001+01:00

On the 9th of December, Keith Tyson released 5000 'history paintings'. From word spread by The Guardian Art & Design blog, visitors to his website input their location (village, town or city name), and using this as input to an algorithm to randomly generate values corresponding to the spins of a roulette wheel produced a downloadable .pdf of the results.
Et voilà.

Equation of procrastination

2008-12-11T04:13:00.000+01:00

ok, all the usual caveats about models, especially psychological ones, especially cognitive-psychological ones, but at the same time the beautiful thing of formalised representations of slightly abstract phenomena, which I think I'm in love with... this week: Temporal Motivation Theory

U=EV/ID

Desire to complete given task = (expectation of success * value of completion) / (immediacy of task * personal sensitivity to delay)

Telegraph article here, very slightly more in-depth take from Science Daily here... or, if you've really got something else you should totally be doing right now, presentation by Piers Steel (theory author) here (including suggestions for motivation control n' that).

Job application assignment

2008-12-10T16:46:00.000+01:00

250 words on how an article you have seen recently had been influenced by statistics

I kinda want to do some kind of cover version of this... ....soon as I figure out some kind of clever/funny/relevant way to do it (ie. I maybe need like an actual Daily Mail article or something that actually goes as far as to almost say something similar...)

Marina Hyde on Muggle Quidditch

2008-12-09T00:38:00.001+01:00

"Harry Potter's favourite sport is currently sweeping collegiate America, despite the fact that humans can't fly"

" There are good and rubbish fictional sports - my colleague Steven Wells cited some notables in a blog earlier this year. But the good ones almost without exception make some kind of satirical or philosophical point. Otherwise, well, what's the point? They're just not cricket. Or football. Or baseball, or whatever . . . given the philosophical/satirical qualities of most fictional sports, attempting to recreate them in real life is the equivalent of testing Zeno's paradox of the arrow in flight. When this ancient philosophical point is realised in the form of a real-life sport, you get something known as "archery," which for many is less interesting than the idea that motion is merely illusory "

Nothing to add or contest.