Halfway through the Day is a Foot into the Long Weekend

It's already feeling like the new year here, while I'm scrounging for a late lunch. At least I was able to get new marching orders, having shared promising results. 

Hibernation soon - then hybriding my time to start off my new leg. 

Stepping Stone

Well, at least that works.

The code can use a bit more cleaning-up, but I at least got results in the main direction that seems workable.  Next logical step seems to be taking on results in a reference paper - but that requires one more fairly serious tweak.

Either way, just confirming the code's holding for more cases.

Backtrack and Trims

So, to figure out how to include the things I thought could be ignored, a bit of backtrack (or normal mode) was employed.  Got the expected results - now to trim some code, make it better, and eventually figure out how to work out the code I should be using.

Maybe by tomorrow?

*sniff*

Still sniffly. Have to work out the code I'm using, since I have to consider something I thought could safely be ignored. 

On the other hand, an amount of stability was introduced over the weekend. Must take advantage and consider the restrictions moving forward, crucially in February.

The Fox Hunt

So, continuing yesterday's efforts, today was spent looking for my problem.  This would have been foolish had I not been doing research.

Well, still felt a little foolish.  But mostly found some sources that outlined several versions of my problem.  Now to get a shotgun...

Stall

Today was not as productive as I had hoped.  A lot of things done, still quite a lot to do.  Still sniffly, now with sore lip outline, possibly due to allergic reaction.

Hodge-Podge

Collated a few results, got the green light to go ahead with next step. Attended a panel discussion featuring Nobel and Fields prize winners. Now off to have dinner with some school friends.

Sometimes days go by like this, even with a cold.

Change of Pace

This week will be less reading and more doing. Of course, that means I'll be working out code on thr simplest cases of a model problem. Computing has always been crawling to walking and running, hopefully.

Of course, cold/cough hasn't decided to go quite yet. Sigh.

Bittorent Sync

Since I find myself relying on cloud storage often, and I often have two devices that are simultaneously on, I'm keen to try out Bittorent Sync.

Does anyone have advice / tips on its usage?  I assume I'm transferring text files or PDF files that are at most a few MB in size.

Of Feeling

Despite how I have at times tried to capture the immediacy of feeling in the form of this blog, it's when the feelings are heavier, not necessarily more nuanced, but in need of better-chosen verbiage, that I try to both take time to frame and also try to rush deeper headlong, to catch the texture of the rush of emotion.

Today, I had found out that one of my erstwhile students had passed away.  A month or so ago, an underclassman of mine from high school had also succumbed to his condition in a hospital, and similar (trickles? floods?) flows of emotion are running in me.

I can't say that I was close with either of them, but they were both social-media contacts, and I waded through the messages of their networks in the wakes of their passing.  But you would not need to be close to feel the loss that runs like a wave in these messages.  Some are short messages, and some are anecdotes.  I am gladdened that no vitriol was evident in either case, well-wishers and bon-voyagers throughout.

I briefly muse that it always feels worse, an unfairness unspoken, of younger men and women taken ahead of you.

I guess that is all I really can say.  I will not eulogize, as there are better people to do so.

Week of Sniffles

So it seems that not taking meds has had some benefit of not being narcoleptic, but I am still currently sniffly. Nonetheless, some better progress in the reading department, though arranging all the relevant ideas in my head is not proving to be easy.

Hiccup

Reading is going a little more slowly than I'd like today, on account of the meds keeping me drowsy from the commute here, and the suprisingly frequent flare-ups of hiccupping occurring: I've counted three instances today, and it's barely past tea-time.

Anyways, onward through the breech.

Edit: okay, been wondering why the last few posts have been on G+.  They won't automatically do so now.  Also, pork-bun-and-hot-milk-tea are now sort of waking me up.

Edit: also, weird that G+ posting is coming up as a comment on the blog page.

Edit: hiccup jag number four.  somewhat fully awake.

Edit: number five in about nine hours of total wakefulness.  doesn't even include last night's instance

Edit: and twice more in the next two hours makes eight.  should I be worried?

Edit:  a ninth before the end of the day.

A Few Days After

So, spent the day at home yesterday, knocked over by the sore throat part of the cold-cough trio, and I followed it up today by not going to work.  To be more precise, doing work outside the lab, sandwiched between visiting academic friends in proximity to work, which so happened to be attending a seminar by Michael McCourt, a visiting professor of Univ. of Denver.  I'll be reading a few of his papers to report to my supervisor, hopefully tomorrow - but I hope the report will be as promising as today's talk indicates.

In short, more reading, after an island of not-reading-much.  So it goes.

Four Years Hence

It *has* been a while, hasn't it.

I'm not currently up for doing a recap of the intervening period.  In fact, I'm only going to give a perfunctory update on what I am currently up to, which is: reading.

Likely, this spate of writing has come from the decompress I usually need when (and during) reading a journal article.  Hopefully, I'll be somewhat more coherent at a future (soon-ish) time.

I'm currently reading on radial basis functions (RBFs) and realigning what I had read (and worked) on about it about close to the end of 2009 / start of 2010.  May be useful: reading it in preparation to attending a seminar roughly in the same area.

Edit: forgot to add that I had had a few medications for cough / cold / fever, so I'm also a bit sleepy.  It does not help with the reading, whereas cutting it up, say by writing here, is helping out, since I have to reassess what I understand so far.