I've been reading a slightly odd book, by the name of "The Human Side of Statistical Consulting". I suspect it wasn't such an odd book when it was published (1982) but changes in the power, availability, and ease of use of statistical computing packages, as well as changes in the availability of desktop computers, would appear to have made amazing changes in the practice of statistical consulting. Such gems as:

"Even the least mathematically inclined statistician is good at arithmetic. " (ha. arithmetic is something I get the computer to do most of the time. I only resort to pen and paper when I have to manipulate equations. )

or 

"Clients' computational resources are commonly very limited, such as to a desk calculator"

and

"Getting everything in writing is a good thing to do ... however it has some drawbacks. A more or less minor drawback is that it takes time. For you to write it and get through the typing pool may take a couple of days."

Having pointed these out, I should say that it is a very interesting perspective on the practice of statistics, rather than the more theoretical stuff I normally read. I'm fortunate that I'm not having to work with scientists from a wide variety of backgrounds, and it would appear, also fortunate in that they all value what I have to say, and generally don't disregard it (even if they sometime misunderstand it).

People getting kicked out of the Nutcracker for fighting?

Some of you may read a blog entitled Mental Nurse. I have guest posted to it a couple of times this year, and in a recent entry of my posts (Insight and why it doesn't always help) was highlighted as some of the best of Mental Nurse for the year.

I am particularly proud of this because I am not typically a talented writer, and I certainly don't see myself as someone who is good at writing. But to be recognised (even as one of many who are recognised on a blog rather than in a proper journal or something) makes me feel happy and is as good a Christmas present as I could receive.

I guess this is as good a time as any to step back and think about goals. Here are some of mine:

Get back into the M.A.T. program next year, and get the piece of paper at the end of it. Wherever my life takes me, I really believe that successfully finishing off that experience would be so much better than failing to.

Either learn, or learn how to fake, a few more social skills. (This looks like it's going to be a prerequisite of the previous item, and it's not a terrible idea, in any case.)

Be open to whatever good things life sends my way.

Find a way to share awesome things about math, in ways that help to stimulate others to be creative.

Keep doing my own creative stuff with math. (I could write a whole post about what I have brewing, all of which got shoved to the back burner when I started the program. Maybe I will soon.)

Sell enough of my puzzles to justify making another batch this May or June. This will mean doing the dirty work of marketing for reals.

Write static fiction or IF that knocks people's socks off. Pick one substantial work I want to get done, and finish it by some time in September. (Not coincidentally, when an IFcomp game would need to be done by, and when school stuff would be starting back up, although I'm not at all sure what fall next year looks like, since I've done the academic load, but probably I'd have to start from scratch with the teaching placement.)

Learn one new kind of dance in the coming year.

Stay physically fit. I do okay in the bright season, and was biking more in September than I ever have. I do abominably in the dark season, and when I went to the December Céilí I was feeling it.

Keep my spirits up. I have trouble with this during the dark season too. But when this goes down, all of the other goals become so much harder.

Bring beautiful music into people's lives. (I'm doing pretty well with this with SRS. There is nothing like singing for people at faires who perhaps were just looking for a place to sit down, and making that instant connection. I still need to tweak what I'm doing musically during the rest of the year.)

(For the next few months) Find a job that pays my rent and gets me out of having to rely on my parents. Relevance to my career would be nice, but it's only going to be a few months anyway if I start back up with the M.A.T. program next year, so it doesn't need to be amazing.

(For the next few years) Find a job that I don't hate and that gives me the money and leaves me the time to do things I love. If the job is itself a thing I love, and advances my other goals, even better, but that's not important in the short term. In the longer term, if my other goals are working out, then that will become a goal.

Or has it? Here's what one enthusiast says:

[OLPC] put the fear of God into Intel and forced the worldwide introduction of the Netbook, thus driving down the median price of personal computing all over the world -- whether you choose to give them credit for that achievement or not.

Of course I do not. It's a completely bogus, apologist rewrite of the history. Netbook arose from Asus EEE, which was shipping with VIA CPU (Correction: DaveJ says Celeron). That is what made Intel to hustle and push Atom, and not OLPC. In fact, Intel tried to counter OLPC with something entirely different: the Classmate PC. That it was a lame design, quickly consigned to the dustbin of history, shows very clearly how little fear OLPC put into Intel.

Now, one may argue that OLPC demonstrated low-cost techniques that Asus later used. Or, perhaps, both OLPC and EEE used the same techniques developed by Quanta. The B0 XO-1 was produced in November 2006, and EEE came about almost a year later. Asus marketing officials made references to OLPC when EEE was announced in July 2007, so a response was evident. But the rhethoric about Intel and its fear of God has no basis in reality. The reason is very simple actually: Negroponte's obstinate refusal to sell OLPC commercially removed OLPC from contention, so there was nothing for Intel to fear from that direction.

As soon as Hope's "12 Days of Cliché" idea was expanded from being a fiction fest to something more multimedia, we started throwing around ideas for types of fanworks we like to make.

I don't usually think of recommendations as a fanwork -- not in the same way as fiction or art. But you know what occurred to me during that brainstorming session? They sure are a lot of work! And I only go to the effort because I'm a fan. I would guesstimate that if you squashed all the time I spend making recs back-to-back... it would take up maybe two or three weeks a year. (crack_van alone takes up a week: the best part of a day for each set.)

That's really quite a lot! So, after that rather stunning realisation, I decided to celebrate both all that work, and the love of fanworks that drives me to make all those recs.

In keeping with our fest theme of "clichés," the result is a set of favourites about born and unborn children, or mpreg and kidfic in our evocative fannish vernacular. :)

I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

( Musing on Mpreg )

Stories

( Leading up to happily ever after... )

( Crack and angst... )

( Temporary adoption... )

Songvid

( Constructed mpreg (un)reality... )

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/334499.html.

• 19:22 A very Merry Christmas to one and all. Full of turkey. Resting before heading to the Elbo Room for Sassy and The Yes Gos #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Poll #1503810
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

Should I move back?

Hotel Utah, 11/21/09, five of the six bands (I missed Perfect Machines), 35 photos on Flickr.

Way behind on photos again, time for a catch-up.

Had a lazy morning, having opened the larger presents my parents left the previous evening over Skype.
( I got a cute hat for Christmas from my parents - have a photo. )

We then stressed out a little trying to construct a pavlova for tomorrow (didn't beat the eggs enough before adding the sugar, then I didn't add the sugar slowly enough and it didn't dissolve properly) and appetisers for the Christmas dinner we were going to that night.

Mini-recipe: Mushroom melba toast with swiss cheese
Finely chop mushrooms, fry with some margarine, Italian herb mix, salt and pepper until cooked. Add a splash of water and cornflour to thicken. Slice swiss cheese into squares, put one square each on a piece of melba toast and add a spoonful of mushroom mix to the top. Bake in oven until cheese melts.

We also made melba toast bruschetta and baked-tortilla triangles with cream-cheese&chive spread, roasted capsicum and cucumber. Everyone was very complimentary.

A reconstruction of several scenes from the Christmas dinner:
Person: So how do you fit into this?
Me: *pause* I'm [hostess]'s brother's wife's sister's son's wife.
Nobody responded with the appropriate Spaceballs leading lines, though. ("So what does that make us?" / "Absolutely nothing, which is what you are about to become.")

People should wear badges that declare their knowledge sets so that when they ask me what I do I can pitch my answers appropriately. (When they ask for more details on what I do, do they want me to say "ASP.NET and I'm trying to branch into Ruby and Python"? Or do they just want details on a specific website?)

Edit: Whoops, used the wrong tag to cut initially!

Bugs Inside: What Happens When the Microbes That Keep Us Healthy Disappear?

The human body has some 10 trillion human cells -- but 10 times that number of microbial cells. So what happens when such an important part of our bodies goes missing?

With rapid changes in sanitation, medicine and lifestyle in the past century, some of these indigenous species are facing decline, displacement and possibly even extinction. In many of the world's larger ecosystems, scientists can predict what might happen when one of the central species is lost, but in the human microbial environment -- which is still largely uncharacterized -- most of these rapid changes are not yet understood.

Meanwhile, each new generation in developed countries comes into the world with fewer of these native populations. "They're actually missing some component of their microbiota that they've evolved to have," Foxman says.

Previously, previously.

I can't decide what's crazier... that I thought making this vid with a single-track editor was a good idea... or that I'm still making it.

OMG, there must be 200 cuts already, and I'm only 23 seconds in! Also, I have a horrible feeling I'm going to run our of source, even though I have about a zillion hours worth.

How on earth do vidders do this??? <--See what I did there? I totally took back my tentative vidder identification.

PS--The 1940s were on the good crack.

PPS--This announcement brought to you entirely because Captain Jack Harkness looks good in a uniform.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/334190.html.

• 08:47 @woofycub mmm what do bad doctors do? ;) #
• 08:48 @DanniiMinogue and to you Ms Dannii #
• 08:49 @FortbridgeMedia you are mixing with the wrong crowd then... :) #
• 18:13 @woofycub that SOUNDS interesting #
• 18:23 @jasonjordan can I please have one? ;) #
• 23:00 @jasonjordan you mean Bronya? Zemiro is the hotness. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Under the cut: no spoilers beyond general impressions.
( Read more... )

Went home to visit the folks in Busselton. Yes, I can truly say, the new highway to Busselton is a boring drive.

This having a laptop thing is pretty awesome, though I'm still to get used to this computer and the sucky OS (getting upgrade media for win 7 but that hasn't arrived yet).

I do need to get a new battery though, this one gets around 3 hours which just doesn't feel like enough. The keyboard is nice though, much nicer than my desktop keyboard.

i made a little comic for emily chronicling a day in the life of her three cats. it is based entirely on real incidents that occured over the two days leading up to christmas.

some background, emily has three cats -
tik and zak - brothers who are something like 6 years old. zak is black and white and always behaves. he is a bit of a scaredy cat. tik is orange tabby who is influenced by the poor behavior of others. both are adorably fat.
jo - new orange tabby kitten. so bad but SO cute that he gets away with everything. and he's totally a bad influence on tik.

here they are in non-cartoon form:


anyhow, i made this comic the other night and now you can read it. also, you should know that ian and i are sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor at the foot of emily's bed. so that's who you see in the bedtime comics.



( a day in the life of cats - the comic )

Given that once it was downloaded I wasn't desperate to watch it immediately, you should have some idea of just how low I had set the bar. So I had seriously low expectations...

And I was still disappointed.

It really is a mess. It has moments and elements that I liked, but they are all too brief and mostly come at the end. I really hoped RTD would return to form and give us something approaching the levels of Rose, The End of the World, Parting of the Ways or Doomsday. Either a simple, well realised story, or a proper, amazing finale.

Not even close. If I had seen any of those episodes and then you'd shown me this one, and I didn't know it was written by the same man, I would never have believed it.

He's got a hell of a lot of ground to make up with part 2. I don't think he's going to, but I'd genuinely like to be posting this time next week saying that it was not only a fabulous send off to the Tenth Doctor, but an amazing and brilliant send off to Russell and his team.

2/10



Any comments to this post are likely to contain massive spoilers, so please be warned.