not really rational

en: going to a demoparty

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:48:13 GMT

demoscene, magfest, nurupo

Despite what DocD/TRSi told me regarding shacking up a demoparty with another event, I'm apparently hosting such a demoparty in January. I think the biggest plus to this is that I have the existing event's organizer's blessing since he and the board of directors are very big into the demoscene anyway, especially when it comes to the 1990's PC scene. In fact, he confided to me that he had tried to set up a small gathering back at MAGFest 4 with massive failure, and he's actually pretty excited that I'm trying to plan something like this.

Nevertheless, it isn't exactly a full-fledged demoparty to the extreme that I'd like it to be. Looking at the link, one should notice a distinct lack of proper demo compos, and the big reason for that is, well, I don't know what sort of an audience I'd have for that part of this event. I know for a fact that I have a huge number of musicians that usually attend, and some of the #mod_shrine guys come to MAGFest solely because there are other trackers there, so the tracking scene is in pretty full-swing already. I can at least pander to them and, in the future, see if I can't build up some interest in the current collection of attendees or some external ones (e.g., from attendees of European parties) to get another real North American party in the works.

I'm also desperately trying to get an invitro written to release Real Soon Now(tm) so that I can advertise this to other sceners as an up-and-coming event to watch. I already have a soundtrack, so all I have to do now is actually write the code to paint the pretty pictures to the display.

... and speaking of prods, I've been slowly working on un-fuckifying CELLULOL to the point where I have some of the originally planned effects working. Alpha blending works properly now that I'm not being a computer science kid and trying to encapsulate objects inside classes. I'm also rewriting some of the speed-critical (hah) code in Jasmin, which is the JVM's notion of assembler. Java sucks.

I'm up to my eyeballs in damage control. Fun, I guess?

en/de: still alive

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:06:37 GMT

I've admittedly been a huge twitter freak for the past several months, and I've been far too strung out really to type anything coherent that's more than a couple of sentences long... oder einfach ist der Grund so: ich kann am Moment nicht auf Englisch schreiben!

Eventually, I will get around to writing up some non-dated material for corvidae.org that I'll end up crossposting here. A lot of that will most likely deal with, what, random computer graphics and math stuff with some lamenting about some of the frustrating things about St. Louis that I've noticed over the past 14 years of living here. All of it is really making me want to go back to East Bay or to someplace that sucks quite a bit less.

Some highlights: IMAHA at SIUE in September 2008; IMAHA at UIUC in March 2009 (in particular: reconstruction of matrix elements in low-rank matrices); Blockparty 2009 at Cleveland, OH, in April 2009; Anime Central 2009 at Chicago, IL, in May 2009. Oh, and I turned 22, big fucking deal.

en: gainful employment

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 06:21:57 GMT

siue, physics, math, numerical analysis, work

As of Friday, I'm now a numerical analyst for the Department of Physics. I'll be getting paid to write code in Fortran to approximate integrals and solutions to PDEs as well as perform the appropriate error analysis thereon.

Interesting fact: My pay rate is competitive with what the graduate students here get in their financial packages.

en: insert some diatribe about continued fractions here

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:00:36 GMT

I'm doing more math these days than I can realistically allot time in which to do it all, so I feel that I've neglected my duty to write in here every now and then.

This semester is sizing up to be another royal kick in the ass, but that's fine. I survived last semester, and I'm ready to rip and tear through another one.

... though, I'm afraid of both my real analysis course and my algebra course. The upside is that the texts for both are reasonable, and [agw] suggested the supplement of baby Rudin as a way of seeing things from another angle.

Either way, I'm alive.

en: at magfest.

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:32:58 GMT

I'm living it large in DC metro now. See my previous entry for my phone number.

Let's do lunch.

en: magfest 7

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 07:38:19 GMT

magfest

(6) Hey, guys, I'm going to MAGFest 7 this year (next year?). (1) I will have no idea what my room assignment is until I check in, but I'll have a notecard with my tripcode (!rfvLewovkA) written on it attached to my door somehow.

(8) I plan on also towing along my Ibanez 5-string bass. (7) This means that I'll probably end up doing some stupid musical shit in Jamspace while I'm there, namely video game tunes. (8) I'm looking more toward the canonical Final Fantasy, Zelda, and Mario tunes for this, but I'm open to almost anything.

(9) That said, I have a cover of Little Bitchard's "Choose Zero Polys And Shaders" (Demo version, 1in10 139 Italo remix, Game Boy remix) in the works. (2) It will be badass.

(9) I may end up chatting virt up somewhat in regard to FM synthesis, so chances are, I'll be in the same place as him somewhere in there. (4) Feel free to come by and say hello and listen to what I'm talking about (because it is really cool and stuff).

(5) Reread this note and write down the numbers in order. That's my phone number. See you there.

en: distracting myself from electrostatics and algebra

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:55:00 GMT

I needed a distraction from studying for finals, so I filled out some random handwriting meme.

Your name/username.
Left-handed or right-handed?
Favorite letters to write?
Least favorite letters to write?
Write "The quick, brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
Tag 6 people

My responses.

en: #not-math truths

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 03:43:55 GMT

quotes

<MrFawkes> psheldr: Okay... prove anything you want, but using no axioms.
<psheldr> eh...
<psheldr> thats like canoeing without a canoe

en: four more semesters...

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:55:39 GMT

school, siue

I just ran the numbers again and talked it over with my advisor on Wednesday, and it's looking like I'll be four semesters away from graduation when this semester's over. I need to talk to OSFA to butter them up with regard to funding opportunities and things of the like to get this mess done and overwith.

I let out a resounding yay and then promptly remembered that I need to start looking at graduate schools next fall.

en: buh, buh (what the fuck am I doing here again?)

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:58:07 GMT

life, school, siue, math, physics, quantum mechanics, harmonic analysis

I'm bored out of my fucking mind with 19 credit hours, which really shocked me. I was busy at first because I was trying to complete every assigned problem set, but I realized that it was terribly futile because I'd lose interest shortly after starting... not because it's boring; rather, because I know the material in several different ways already.

My solution to this problem is to pick up some extra things to study. I'm currently gnawing through ordinary differential equations so that I can talk to Lu about getting into the partial differential equations course next semester, and I'm going to pick up texts on quantum mechanics and signal processing as suggested by Horner and Song.

The only class that's really any sort of a challenge is my algebra class, and that's more in the realm of beating against my ability to do proofs. Most of the people there have had the introductory real analysis course already.

I'm beginning to think that I've hit the asymptotic upper bound for my learning delta at this institution, and that's a damn shame.

en: i'm reasonably happy (math celebrity version)

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:55:27 GMT

math

On Thursday, I commuted out to University City to see Michael Aschbacher give a talk at Washington University on permutation groups. A bit of it went over my head, and I smiled at his railing on cyclic groups, but for the most part, he just rambled on about a couple of crucial theorems and defined the category theoretical notions of a few other things. I'm being vague, but I didn't have paper handy when I walked in on it, so I missed it. He was fast.

I met one of the academic celebrities on my list, and now, I have to write a reaction paper about it for my algebra class. How cool is that?

... and back to writing up physics lab write-ups and doing data analysis and fearing taking modern physics next semester. The only redeeming factor is that I'll have Kaplan teaching it, and he's pretty enjoyable so far for 212 lab.

en: on emacs and (in general) windowsy stuff

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:36:26 GMT

nerd

I happened to stumble upon these today using reddit somehow, and they're fucking useful. I don't have the time right now to implement the whole mess, but I will eventually. Firing up VS.NET to work on C# doesn't cut it, and I'm already using Emacs for Nemerle and NAnt because the tools there actually suck a lot less.

en: rain + padded bicycle saddle = bad news

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:54:32 GMT

life

Remind me to purchase a solid plastic bike saddle. I'm not fond of the padded ones to begin with, but it's even worse when they get stuck out in the fucking rain.

I'd take the bitch off my bike and just ride without it, but my rear reflector is mounted to the damn saddle post, so I kinda have to keep it on there.

Regardless, riding five miles semi-daily like this is proving to be beneficial.

en: what was conjectured to be obviously true really is true

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:57:56 GMT

life

I've been playing a little bit of Guitar Hero 3 on the Wii, and I realized the one thing that everyone has been saying or implying (including South Park) is actually true. Case in point: "Miss Murder" by AFI is a fun god damn song to play through in the game, but it's neither fun nor particularly interesting musically in real life.

I mean, come on. The bass line is essentially root 8th root slide 8th root 8th root root 8th for the entire damn song. It's almost asking to be slapped and popped with that mentality.

en: st. louis fails it

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:20:05 GMT

Dear St. Louis:

It's spring, and it's snowing outside. Ergo, you're fucking doing it wrong.

en: [pics] incredible chalk drawings

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:16:13 GMT

reddit, pics

Holy fuck, these play with my head too much.

Incredible Chalk Drawings (comments on reddit)

en: [math] care of reddit, have some reading material

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:10:26 GMT

nerd, math, reddit

I find calculus (on the real line) to be boring as hell. We've beat the dead horse too many times, and teaching calculus at the university level is mechanized enough to make a lot of folks ill. On the other hand, finding the analogous connections to discrete math from something inherently continuous is quite interesting. Sometimes, there're obvious parallels; sometimes, there aren't.

In the same vein, analysis of a discrete set of data is something I've taken to accept because of the fact that I've been beating myself senseless with experimental classical mechanics as of late. Sometimes, having a small reference of what some of the statistical methods represent is nice.

en: er, what?

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:08:01 GMT

life

In no particular order:

I moved into a new place somewhere in Fairview Heights. Market Place and St. Clair Square are within x distance, for some x in {walking distances}.
I ran around the fringes of downtown St. Louis late at night and looked at some of the construction that's going down. It's creepy when you start to see evidence of squatters in a structure that you're exploring.
I terminated some RG6 coax for the first time in about five years. I forgot that it's harder than it looks. Plus side: we have the satellite dish hooked up.
I noticed that my summer is going to be nothing but fucking work, but that's okay. At least I know my work on the house I'm living in won't go to pot this time.
I played Smash Brothers Brawl and slapped a few people around with Lucario. It's hard because that bastard's attacks are all up close and personal, and getting that close with other characters is a pain in the ass.
I reneged on my plans to go to University City for epic protests against the Church of Scientology that are supposedly happening... today.
???
PROFIT!

I'm bored enough to be doing homework during the off times when I'm not working on the house, which seems to be during the early hours of the fucking morning.

en: data analysis blows sometimes (part II)

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:15:55 GMT

school, siue, phys211a, phys212a

Everything makes sense intuitively and mathematically, but when I add in my experimental data, the whole shit goes to hell.

Even when I play around with everything in Octave, I'm coming up with some really bizarre numbers. For example, I have the value of g at 1603.1 m/s^2, which is way the fuck off, based off of a linear regression of a relationship between the magnitude of the x-component of my acceleration vector and the sine of the angle of inclination of the air track. What's the %Error for that? I don't even want to know.

That said, I give up. I'm going to finish up the data analysis part of my report and hand it in. I'm tired of fucking with this stupid bullshit to the point that it's depressing me that I'm not riding my bicycle or hanging out with the few remaining folks on campus or whatever.

en: data analysis blows sometimes

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:40:11 GMT

school, siue, phys211a, phys212a

It's supposed to be spring break, but I'm spending my well-deserved time off doing homework that's due by means of electronic submission on Monday.

Why the fuck is this god damn classical mechanics course such a bitch? Can anyone explain me this? I'm spending five hours outside of a one-credit lab section for this preparing a god damn lab report complete with just enough data analysis to make the TA happy when I should be spending two hours doing this.

If only I weren't saving the bottle of pinot noir on my desk for something, I'd be enjoying a glass of it right about now. Perhaps, then, some of this shit might make sense by means of a paradigm shift.

en: technically homeless

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:21:36 GMT

life

At corvidae.org:

Addendum (27 Feb 2008): So, it appears that I'm now technically homeless by way of (unlawful) eviction. If you play the O'Fallonian politics game, mark one more point for my dad's family. They're totally awesome people, aren't they?

In some respect, I'm rather elated that this has happened. My mom's attorney remarked to her this morning that my aunt Kristi Vetri blindsided him with this immoral action in saying that he took her word to mean that she would allow me and my mother to reside in the house at 410 US Highway 50 in O'Fallon, Illinois, for any additional time required for my mother to close on another house. The fact that this has happened will allow some much required movement in my parents' divorce to take place.

The worst part is that I'm being dragged kicking and screaming back into the ordeal.

en: huh

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:47:35 GMT

life

What the fuck day is it again?

en: dear classical mechanics...

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:32:19 GMT

school, siue, phys211a

Classical mechanics, you have betrayed me one last time for today. I am leaving you to go hang out with some cooler people.

I'm sorry, but you're too predictable.

en: hardware failure for the fucking win

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:02:07 GMT

nerd

You know what's totally awesome? Totally awesome is witnessing your disk controller and your NIC going tits up while trying to finish homework that's due last week.

And people ask me why I constantly make an effort to go to the labs to get work done. I can at least guarantee that the computers there won't be in as shit shape as mine.

I'm thinking that it's pretty much time to plop down the money required to replace the Opteron box.

en: hi internet

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:50:29 GMT

life

I'm still alive. Just thought I'd let you know.