Glen Barnett
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Glen Barnett" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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03:57 pm
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Getting your eye in
I managed to give my right eyeball a very solid hit with my thumb on Thursday night, lost a good bit of time on Friday (I couldn't really look through it for long without some pain, nausea and double vision - I covered it over, which helped some but that wasn't entirely a successful effort). The weekend was spent being quiet and it's still a bit tender.
Anything I had in mind for the last three days mostly went by the wayside.
I seem to be okay now at least.
Yes, still alive.
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01:17 pm
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Bidding against crazy people
I have been trying to buy Pokemon Energy cards on ebay.
In a couple of weeks of looking, there's only been one large set of energy cards, for which the exhorbitant postage from the UK prevented me from bidding quite enough to get (I was second highest bidder; maybe I should have gone a bit higher, but I worry about bidding way more than -mostly- mere basic energy cards are worth).
I have bid in several auctions that included energy cards among larger lots. These auctions are normally for used rather than new, and without a specific list of included cards or number of repeats, so must be assumed to be mostly commons with duplicates of the most readily available cards. If they're offering say 60 cards, I don't see how thats worth more than about 5 AUD (and that's including a couple of dollars for postage).
However, the usual result is that the cards will go for around 80% of what a NEW theme deck (60 cards) would go for, sometimes more - where you know what you're getting, and of what rarities (this information is readily available online).
That is freaking crazy. Yet I have watched it happen over and over. I don't like having to bid against insane people.
I did manage to get a small set of energy cards fairly cheaply at least, but it was far too few for what the kids need.
Not sure what to do but keep trying.
Tags: auctions, insanity, pokemon
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11:06 pm
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Shark net
Did xkcd just jump the shark?
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01:39 pm
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Hi there
Well 2009 and all that.
Kind of hoping for some better outcomes than 2008 held for a lot of people.
I'd make a resolution to post here more often, but I think new years resolutions are largely pointless and I wouldn't listen to me anyway.
2009 = 41 × 49
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04:14 pm
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Paper up
A working paper with my masters student is up here (pdf).
We use this neat little result in our next paper.
Tags: research
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07:19 pm
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One for the arachnophobes... not.
This is a picture of a spider that is very common in Australian houses.
(Actually, spiders in this group are found in many countries...)
They're not particularly dangerous, and I generally catch them in a container and carry them outside. I wouldn't want to be bitten by one, though. The one in the photo is of a typical size, but I have seen a few a good bit larger than that.
They usually prefer to be higher on the wall - up near the ceiling. In my experience, it often seems to be the case that if they're lower down, you'll probably get a storm in the next six to eight hours, but that's simply anecdotal on my part - I don't think that's been tested.
(As for what you do... gently herd it onto the wall would be my advice.)
Tags: nature
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03:02 pm
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In search of a word...
I need a word, which I doubt has ever been coined.
Resampling is a thing statisticians do, where they take samples from their sample, or from some transformed version of their sample, or... anyway, they take a sample, maybe calculate a related set of numbers from it, and then sample from that entity. They call it resampling.
In a discussion of resampling, I want to refer to whatever thing has been resampled; I would like a noun to refer to "the thing which is being resampled".
By analogy with "multiplicand" (that which is to be multiplied) I am tempted to use "resamplicand", but that seems somewhat awkward (or is that just me?). Does anyone have some other suggestion?
(Terms with some related/analogous mathematical-ish precedent would be best, but at present anything which doesn't sound too ugly would probably do.)
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07:47 am
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Damn.
I just found out Noel Bon died.
http://community.livejournal.com/aus_gamers/
I only encountered Noel a couple of times, but it was imposssible to spend time with him and not be drawn to his presence.
Many years ago, I GMed a team at Macquariecon that included Noel and Dennis Ashelford (whose funeral I attended quite a few years ago now), through a Paranoia module I co-wrote with Gary. It was one of my favourite sessions ever. Noel in particular was hilarious.
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02:56 pm
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Back from the calcite mines...
We took a short trip to Jenolan Caves with the kids. The Caves were great, we did 3 cave tours (all caves we hadn't seen on our previous trip). The kids have asked to go again, for longer.
As usual on any trip intended to be at all vacation-like, we had serious car problems. Fortunately the mechanic we went to gave us a loaner car, ordered some parts and slotted us in to his schedule the next afternoon (in spite of having a full slate already) and worked late into the evening (having discovered a couple of problems caused by the overheating caused by the original issue), getting us home only a few hours late.
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03:30 pm
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DNA - translated for programmers
http://ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/
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11:32 am
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Rodents of Unusual Size...
Linkses
1) A huge rodent skull, suggesting it came from an animal weighing about a tonne, has been found. What else are you going to call it?
2) Gah! My brain-scan is showing a blue screen of death!
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09:40 am
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The death of the Pacific Solution
I missed this one. Either I've missed a lot of news lately (and some days I have), or the media just didn't even think it was worth making headlines about.
One of the great shames of Australian politics was the so called "Pacific Solution".
(For those playing at homes other than Australia - if that name sounds really ominous, the reality came close to matching it. When the government consciously adopts overtones of national socialism, you know you have a problem.)
Well, Rudd appears to have ended it, a couple of weeks ago. If I'd known at the time, I would have hailed it then as at least a solid movement in the right direction. I missed it, so I commend it now.
One more thing I don't have to hang my head in shame over any longer. If this government can keep it going for a while, I might even feel a little pride in my country.
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05:51 pm
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Finally some postal votes counted in Bennelong
Looks like a bit over half the postal votes are up.
As expected, they're favouring Howard - two party preferred, about 55-45.
That, suffice it to say, is not nearly enough. He's caught up a bit over 300 votes, still more than 2000 behind, and if my understanding is correct, less than half the postal votes left to count. There may be some more of the other categories to come in (maybe some more absentee votes, for example) but they haven't been running strongly in his favour.
It's looking now very much like he's gone.
I guess we'll know for certain by Monday.
Update: Well, I've done some calculations based on past turnout rates and I guess that there's something like 8000 votes from all sources still to come. No more than half of those can be postal votes. Somehow, for Howard to win, he'd have to get about 63% of the remaining votes (two-candidate preferred basis). Unless the remaining votes include a source that is substantially stronger for Howard than any source in the election so far, he has no chance now.
My guess is that he will fall something over 1300 votes short. Bennelong will be classed as "marginal" next election, but without a sitting PM in the seat, it would take a huge blunder by McKew or by the Labor government to lose it next election.
Update II: A few more went up last night, from a couple of sources. The gap is essentially unchanged (still over 2000). About 4500-odd votes still to come, I think, and Howard needs around 75% of the remaining vote. He's totally gone now. Has he conceded yet? I haven't heard.
Final Update: By my calculation there are likely to be fewer votes still to come than the number of votes Howard is behind. It's as over as it gets.
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08:09 pm
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Voting - when is there a point?
See this article, which discusses the value of voting (in that case, in presidential elections, but the argument can be adapted more widely).
Specifically the above article responds to the commonly held view among a certain subset of economists (specifically, they're responding to a Freakonomics article, but I have heard the argument made numerous times) that voting is largely pointless. Because the articles are based on US presidential elections the structure pushes the discussion a bit further away from voting being worthwhile than it is here, but many of the points both sides are attemtping to make would still apply if they were arguing about the Australian electorate.
The rough gist is this: the original view is your vote has a vanishingly small chance of making a difference, so the economic benefit to you is too small for your vote to have a direct benefit to yourself. The opposing view is that you don't vote only for your direct benefit. If you vote strategically for the good of society (i.e. you try to help everyone, where "help" is whatever you think is the right thing to do for them), your vote actually does seem to be worthwhile.
If you're voting for whichever guy is offering you the biggest space at the trough, you're almost certainly wasting your time, economically speaking. If you're voting for a better society, the return on the investment of voting is worthwhile.
Now it turns out that in the Australian context the analysis doesn't quite carry over - we have to be there to get our name crossed off anyway, so the marginal cost of actually voting is effectively zero. And the differences in our voting system and parliament give our votes (relatively speaking) much more value.
But the principle is still a good one - your vote is much more valuable if you use it to support the principles you think are right, rather than if your vote is swayed by the promise of another $5 per week tax cut.
So vote, but vote for a good reason.
[That site, by the way, is a statistics blog. But if you're interested in politics, particularly US politics, you will find that they regularly post interesting stuff. The biggest news is probably that the sort of analysis you regelarly see in the media is generally completely wrong, and you should trust political pundits less far than you can kick them. And that you should probably kick them a lot.]
Tags: politics
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01:55 pm
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Meanings change...
Google n. A device for pointing at Wikipedia pages.
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09:56 am
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A Senate Party for your consideration.
Aus. politics below the cut.( Read more... )
Tags: politics
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04:33 pm
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When will I ever use...?
I get asked to help people with mathematics-related questions a fair bit.
I wonder if the people that phone me up to ask how may tins of paint they'll need for that sloping ceiling they can't measure directly, or which of two investments is a better deal, or how much they should charge for their dohicky so that after commission and tax comes out there's still $200 left, or ...
are the same ones that said in maths class as kids "When will I ever use this?"
Just wonderin'.
( Read more... )
Tags: mathematics
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03:36 pm
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Formula De
I've never played this game, though it sounds like a somewhat more interesting version of a pen and paper game I played long ago.
However, I did just happen to read an outline of the basic rules on BGG. It looks to me like this would be a very easy game to write a basic AI player for - as in, one that would take not all that much code, but which would give quite good players a run for their money.
It's easy to make an AI dumber, so being able to write a good one easily is a handy thing.
In fact, if it turned out too good in general, one nice way to make it dumber is to give it "personality" - a more aggressive personality, or a more cautious one, for example.
Tags: ai, computers, games
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01:59 pm
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More coupon collecting - some playing about
I've been playing about with the asymptotic distribution a bit. ( Read more... )
Tags: games, mathematics, probability
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05:05 pm
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Childrens do learn
... apparently.
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