Ray Bradbury said, ""

A leisurely Sunday

Reading Steven Tanimoto's Elements of Artificial Intelligence using LISP Examples.

[Insert obligatory remark about those not understanding computer science being the slaves of those who do]

For a while now, I've been wondering exactly how I hear. Being half deaf, I am in the interesting position that some of my auditory processing is conscious; but I cannot quite examine the process. I wonder... iterative hidden markov model algorithms operating on the phoneme and word levels, outputting to higher-order pattern recognizers? Would the higher-order markov model be able to reach down and affect the parameters of the lower order one? Clearly something like this occurs: I do piece together fragments of words according to their most probable combinations, then reject those phonetic clusters which yield nonsensical words given previous words. I wonder how I could simulate something like this. Could I at least write a program as good as I am ("Could you pass the sugar?" turning, often, into "wooden passenger?" prior to filtering mechanism)? Does look-ahead exist?

One of the most interesting things about the study of machine learning, is that you are in large part trying to reverse engineer your own mind.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 11, 2008 12:43 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery

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This a a post about a self-referential story

This is a link to a highly self-referential story. This is not a link, but the second sentence of this post. If this were the third sentence of the post, it would contain a link to Raymond Smullyan's Planet Without Laughter.

This is the last sentence of this post, and this is the last clause of the last sentence whose last word is not this word, but this word. This sentence wishes to point out that the last sentence was a bit drunk and, as usual, too boastful about its place in this post. This is the sentence preceeding the last, donning a fake mustache and hat, strangling the preceeding sentence. This is. A swarm. Of. Sentence fragments. Which are bothering this sentence for details about the murder. This sentence tries to brush up against a particularly attractive sentence fragment. And fails. Entirely.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 10, 2008 17:12 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery, humor

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What's on my mind

Instead of a real post, I will fill my blog vacuum with a brief list of things at the top of my mind lately.

Meg "Teh Kitty" Scottish-name
Algorithmic information theory
Information Theory
Computational complexity
Computability theory
Algorithmic analysis
Machine learning

While the hecticity of life has interfered with programming, I've been studying Smalltalk, Erlang, and Haskell; all languages requiring wildly varying mindsets.

Reading: Donald Knuth's "Art of Programming", Shaun Hedman's "Computability and Complexity", Mikhail Atallah's "Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook", Sanjeed Arora's "Computational Complexity: a Modern Approach", F.D. Lewis' "Essentials of Theoretical Computer Science", Raymond Smullyan's "Recursion Theory for Metamathematics", Corman Et Al.'s "Introduction to Algorithms", and the surprisingly good wiki articles on algorithms from the Bellman-Ford to Dijsktra to Quiksort.

Greg Chaitin, laying the groundwork for algorithmic information theory, formulated the information contained in strings as a function of the smallest program necessary to produce them as output. Ever play with ELIZA or Jabberwacky? I recommend you not try to determine how easily one may reproduce the responses you receive in everyday conversations; the results will sadden you. Note to self: perhaps the drastically reduced information content of the elderly ("hot weather, today!") is in linear and inverse proportion to age. If so, should the Turing Test exclude pathological AI's that simulate the elderly, on the grounds that simulating pathological minds is surprisingly easy?

Interesting article by Scott Aaronson: The Mind is Finite.

Information/computability theory is a nodal science, touching on every other discipline, with the advantage over set theory that it does not turn one into Georg Cantor.

Information/computability theory is a nodal science, touching on every other discipline, with the disadvantage that it causes one to, late at night, try to reverse engineer the algorithms underlying the thought processes that cause one to try to reverse engineer one's thought processes about reverse engineering one's thought processes.

What would this sentence be like if it were a kitten?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 06, 2008 23:25 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery

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I have merely been busy

No, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I've been occupied by:

Work
Being in love with a wonderfully smart and funny woman
Supporting my friend and his terrifyingly pregnant wife
My schizophrenic cat
More work

Notice the timestamp on this post?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at April 15, 2008 04:46 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
life

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Mademoiselle Fluffypants

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at March 15, 2008 20:10 EST | Permalink | comments (5) |
cats, life

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Apache geekery

I've been busy absorbing the docs for Apache2, configuring it for security, and playing around with LAMP.

*grin*

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at March 09, 2008 17:57 EST | Permalink | comments |
geekery, hackery

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I has a kitty!

Pics must wait.

Ah, a hectic life, a wonderful woman, and an imminently squishable cat. Life is good.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at February 29, 2008 19:56 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
life, cats

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Lethal Cuteness

Ilkka posted this a couple days ago: The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Kill You. Holy crap! It's an adorable monstrosity!

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at February 15, 2008 17:57 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
discoveries

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Leekspin

How long have I lived without finding this?! This song is now permanently etched in my brain. (hat tip: Tormn @ #hackthissite)

Update: Larger Leekspin

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at February 12, 2008 01:39 EST | Permalink | comments (4) |
music, discoveries

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Hippo and Dog Polyphony

If this doesn't make you smile, you've got something wrong with your medulla oblongata.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at February 07, 2008 05:20 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
music, morning

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Hack (not) This Site!

I opened an account at Hack This Site, a sandbox environment for learning about web security. A hacking playground!

This is going to be fun.

Update: More addictive than Deathball! {{swoon}}

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at February 04, 2008 20:11 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
discoveries, geekery, hackery

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Robotic orangutan butlers, wearing immaculate tuxedos.

Discuss.

Update:

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at February 03, 2008 16:57 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
humor, boredomblogging

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Wee Morning Political Thought

Voting is the second most irrational act a person can do in a booth that does not contain a well-lubricated weasel.

Update: How many bits of information does a vote contain? How many bits of information about the preference of the population are necessary for a political mandate (w/r/t virtual representation)? Compared to our current voting scheme, how much more information is communicated through the Condorcet Method or other voting methods?

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at February 02, 2008 05:01 EST | Permalink | comments |
politics, humor, blog nocturne

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Linky links

Some interesting things I've been reading today:

Scott Aaronson's The Mouth That Does Not Bite: Why Don't Vaginas Have Teeth?

Scott Meyer's How To Share A Horrifying Experience

Bad Hemingway Parody Generator

Python Challenge Riddles

General Collection of Fermi Questions

The Ackermann Function

The Daily WTF's Tales From the Interview

Cliki: Common Lisp Wiki

Christopher Smart's For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at January 31, 2008 18:33 EST | Permalink | comments |
discoveries, geekery

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More Merciless Mockery

How did I go so long without finding Attrition.org's Going Postal archives?

It is not often that you find proof that a stereotype is, in fact, accurate.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at January 27, 2008 16:16 EST | Permalink | comments |
humor, geekery

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*Belly Drum*

Megan and I had a wonderful date. We met at the bookstore, had pizza, went to the pet store and gawked at kittens, watched that Cloverfield pseudo-Cthulhu movie, had some coffee and pastries, then spent an infinite length of time cuddling at my place.

Life is good.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at January 26, 2008 22:29 EST | Permalink | comments (3) |
life

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Geek Humor Heaven

I've been dicking around with Bruce Schneier's Doghouse exposes of snake-oil crypto products. Commenters provide detailed analysis combined with brutal, ruthless mockery. I love it.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at January 26, 2008 04:14 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
geekery

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Encryption Made Easy

I installed FireGPG, a Firefox plugin that integrates with GnuPG to let you sign/verify/encrypt/decrypt with a right mouse-click. It works perfectly in Gmail, too.

The only problem I have, is its little "save passphrase for session" option. I won't trust that, even though I've looked at the source code to see what happens to this data. Otherwise, it works beautifully.

Yet another example of the open-source community making it that much easier to stick it to the man.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at January 21, 2008 00:13 EST | Permalink | comments (1) |
geekery

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Scary!

Check this out: Paterva's Maltego Search.

Enter your name, IP address, whatever. You'll be surprised at how much data you've left lying around that can allow someone to reconstruct your online browsing habits, telephone number, email address, and more.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at January 20, 2008 21:00 EST | Permalink | comments (5) |
geekery

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Woo Hoo! Books!

Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography arrived yesterday, full of sneaky-secrets. First line: "There are two types of cryptography in the world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files. This book is about the latter." *bellydrum*

I also got Malacalypse the Younger's Discordia.

Why these books? My pineal gland only speaks to me in 4096-bit RSA encryption.

Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at January 19, 2008 05:38 EST | Permalink | comments (2) |
books, geekery

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