Author Archives: Alan V

Work, day 9

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Yeah, so today I met with one of the research programmers working on MinorThird. The more I try and understand how the hell to use M3 with this project, the more confused I get. From my impressions today, it looks like I’m going to have to more or less scrap the stuff I’ve done this week and start over with an M3 implementation…. and I have to figure out how to get it to do what I want it to do.
I mean like, I understand on a conceptual level what I have to do. I understand what needs to happen and, more or less, how to make it happen. I’m just confused about specifics… like how to create samples to train the classifiers with… how to call the classifiers… how to deal with their output… how to write code utilizing M3 classes… that kind of stuff.
Oh well. I am confident in my skills, and I’m sure I can understand this stuff. I just need some time to mess with it. I mean, this is hard stuff… I’m actually kind of impressed with myself that I’ve even gotten this far.
And no big deal about scrapping what I currently have. It runs slow as hell, and I’ve learned a lot from doing it, so it was a good experience nonetheless. I mean, worst case, I don’t get M3 working and I have what I’ve already written, which works on many, many cases (something like 74% of inputs).

You get three photos today, because yay.
OSC, more blown up!

Flowers…. love the colors… and omg depth of field!! *drools*
Isn’t it interesting how, when they’re in focus, they look light purple… but then when they blur they turn darker? Amazing…

Orbit! It just looked so out of place there… I love the contrast of it against the rest of the scene. In the full-sized picture, the background is more noticibly out-of-focus, which draws your attention more to the gum… so yeah.

Why is the world so beautiful? There’s just so much to photograph and look at and enjoy.

Um, so yeah.
Life is good.

Edit: Recipe for what I had for dinner today… it was surprisingly good
Alan’s college-style spinach salad
Ingredients: One package ready-to-eat spinach (whole leaf), 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, 2 single-serving size boxes of raisins, 1 cup Cheerios (optional).
Directions: Pour cheese and raisins into bag of spinach. Shake until throughly mixed and spinach leaves are covered with cheese. Enjoy. Add Cheerios to the salad for a nice crunch.

More feelings?

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Hmm… yeah so, over the last few days, my mood has been continuously improving. All of today, I’ve felt a lot better than I have in a while…
It’s strange, this is the first time since high school when I’ve really felt good about myself… confident in what I do… it actually feels like I’m good enough, for once. Despite work kinda sucking still, I’m feeling more and more confident that I can do it.
And that’s a really good place to be, being completely happy with yourself.

I’ve also been doing a lot of creative photography lately (as I’ve mentioned in my previous posts).
Blurry tree with leaves in foreground

Greg

Oh god playing with depth of field makes me spontaneously orgasm whee!
I don’t know, I’m personally a huge fan of a lot of these pictures (they do look a lot better larger though).
Photography makes me happy. Part of me really wishes I had been a photo major. The other (bigger) part is glad that I’m a CS major.

Workwise, things are going okay. I’ve gotten the primary tokenizer and classifier working… it works on simple things like “How far did she drive if she drove for 5 hours?” and “If she made $50, how long did she work?” Going to need to mess around more with MinorThird to get it working on more complicated things. Spent a lot of time today getting the tokenizer to tokenize things like “how many students got As and Bs” into “how many LABEL2″… figured out an algorithm to do so yesterday on the bus ride home, and implemented it today, and it seems to be working. My only worry is that its runtime is exponential to the length of the input substrings plus linear to the input label sizes… I think
O(2^n + m) == O(2^n) BLEH
Luckily, the input substrings will never be very long, but still. I should definetly find a way to optimize that after I have stuff working better.

Meh. I’m really considering starting a page for my more artsy photography. There’s a lot of it that I’d love to share in a bigger size (the ones I post in this journal are just too tiny to be effective) and such. I should later sometime or something.

I am also the proud new owner of $25 worth of iTunes downloads of Kelly Clarkson’s “Walk Away” and “Because of You” remixes, and Carrie Underwood’s AOL Live session downloads (see today’s “Listening to”). See, we get a lot of money each week for food from my job… about twice as much as I could possibly eat in a week. It’s also in plaid cash. Geagle takes plaid cash. Geagle sells gift cards. I think I win.
Last week I bought a $70 jacket from the CMU bookstore (using my “food money”) because I really needed a jacket (and it’s a really nice one; I’m glad I bought it). Whee. I also bought really good conditioner and shampoo (like, the expensive kind that I wouldn’t normally buy for myself). It’s kinda nice.
So I guess then this money pays for entertainment and necessities for me as well as for food. Whee.

So yeah, life is good right now.

Feeeeeeelings *la la la*

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Hmm…
Yeah, so I’m still feeling good/happy/fine. Whee.

I just noticed something though… I havn’t been able to cry lately, even when I’ve really felt like crying. I mean, yeah, I can do the whole, “Damn I feel really emotional” tears-trickling-down-cheek thing, but I can’t just break down and cry like I used to.
Given that doing that always makes me feel better, it’s weird that I havn’t been able to. Don’t really know what it is.

Oh well, not big deal. Maybe I just got too old to be able to cry like that? I dunno. Kinda sucks though.

Um… I totally slept for 14 hours last night. Woke up at 2 PM today. Meh. Work again tomorrow, dammit. At least Tyler’s back, so maybe we can do stuff together.

This is from a pole by the bus stop by Tim’s apartment. I don’t know what it is about it, but I’m really, really fond of the picture.

I’m also going to watermark all my pictures because I’m paranoid like that. Whee.

Happy

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Yeah so, first I just want to send out a HUGE apology for my entry and behavior yesterday. The lack of sleep, more than anything, was what caused me to be completely angsty and bipolar and such. Thank you to everyone who was there to listen and give advice. Thank you also to my parents, who care about me so much, and whom I really should talk to more often.

I’ve been in a really creative mood. Yesterday and today, I took some of my favorite pictures ever. They’re not anything special (composition-wise and such), but I just find them completely perfect. Wheee.

Um yeah. So I’m actually feeling good today. I had this huge introspective entry written and ready to post, describing how I felt so much more at peace with things and with myself… how I actually feel like I understand myself better now… why I do the things I do (namely, why I’m so negative going into things, because I really didn’t used to be), and such. And then I realized that, by writing it, I’ve accomplished what I had to. For that reason, I won’t post that entry.

I will say, however, that things just make sense now… everything just feels like it fits. I am comfortable with where I stand right now with respect to relationships and foo. I finally understand what people have always been telling me… how the best time for a relationship is when you least expect it, because then it’s meaningful and you’re not desperate. Before the important thing was always, “I like you, is there potential there?” But this time… that’s almost even trivial? What’s more important now is the existing friendship and just… that things work out, no matter what happens. I don’t even really know.
And I think that, for the moment at least, I can be content being single. That’s a good feeling… one I havn’t felt in a long time.
It’s nice.

So I spent all day today at Tim’s apartment playing games with Keith. It was lots of fun. The bus ride back was kinda interesting… the bus Keith and I planned to take only went to Wilkinsburg… so we got off on the busway and had an adventure figuring out what we had to take or do to get back to Oakland. Wheee.

A building on the way home from Tim’s apartment.